Thread: Do you settle?

10" is a keeper in my books unless the big boys are biting hard and heavy that day

It was just a joke. I keep 9s and 10s myself.

Kept a few 9's at Truman last week.Really not much meat once you fillet.Best keepers are 11 to 13 IMO.

I prefer to keep 10-11" fish, let the big ones go to make us some more!

In a lot of Lakes 12 " plus crappie represent less than 20 percent of the population. If you spend all your time targeting just those fish you can get pretty good at it. But...you will have more fishless days,and you can actually be hurting the fishery by removing to many of the larger older spawning fish. They lay the most eggs,do a better job of protecting the nest and are better at selecting nesting sites. Best thing to do is harvest according to the fishery,study the creel surveys and fisheries sampling to determine what is best to do. Sometimes we need to harvest fish to improve the overall fishery.If not all year at least a part of it.And some lakes have plenty of food to feed a huge population of crappie,and if it does then not harvesting a lot of small fish means better fishing to come.If Lake can't support them then leaving them just stunts them all.

Know your fishery,so easy now with the internet.And if their are too many small bass and bluegill take some of them too,they are just mucking up the works if they are overpopulated. Clean those little fish and make use of them.Yeah it's a small bite but a good one. Pile em on some white bread for a mean fish sandwich.

Harvest what needs harvesting....and it all gets better.And when a fishery gets hammered by some bad spawns get off those fish and give them a chance to come back.

Buddy and I have a rule 10" or bigger or it goes back. Like you said not much meat on a 9" fish

Doggone.

Thats a pretty good point. I never really thought about it like that. Sometimes when fishing the spawn. Females where you can see they are full of eggs. We toss back. Especially the bigger mammas.

I dont know if doing that helps but i try to toss them back.