I fish catch and release in this Metro year around. There are plenty of others who will harvest to the max and beyond. I don't fish the spawning beds either. Every male taken off even if released is one doomed brood of fry, and many of the released males will not re-bed.

No question in my mind that human harvest puts a cap on the top of the size spread. That is certainly true up here where it may take well over a decade to produce a true slab. Life expectancy becomes real important. The heavier the human harvest the lower the life expectancy and so the less likely there will be slabs.

We have some Metro lakes that got hit with a consumption advisory on crappies something like a little less than a decade ago. A large number of the family meat fishermen stopped fishing it and the average size almost immediately improved. Now as enough time has passed one of those lakes has had true slabs come out of the woodwork. Sizes that nobody remembers seeing there before and pretty good numbers of them, too, as well as an improved average size and some truly little ones as well - a much more complete size spread. One nearby lake that escaped the advisories has a lot of crappies but very few ever show more than 9 or 10" and then almost never.

Heavily harvested crappie waters inevitably see a decline in size that tends to reverse when the harvest pressure eases. Duh! That has been known for a long time! I would prefer to see reduced limits and a slot for harvest as well as protected spawning beds with a specific fee for taking a trophy fish. That is probably not going to be the most popular set of ideas though, and it aint going anywhere until most people realize that the heavier the harvest the smaller the average size is going to be, since it takes extended life expectany to produce the larger fish.

Stunting due to overcrowding is not a factor that I see as valid expect for waters that are very small. Far too much is made of it for anything besides ponds.