Thread: Lake Charles

Been fishing lake charles 30 plus years and the overall size of the crappie we caught each year has gone down. I'm curious to hear from mojorig what the agfc thinks is going on.

Originally Posted by petercreek

Been fishing lake charles 30 plus years and the overall size of the crappie we caught each year has gone down. I'm curious to hear from mojorig what the agfc thinks is going on.

2nd to that. I remember going with my uncle 35 years ago and night fishing the trees and catching what I used to think was "eating size, maybe 8 inchers" crappie. Quit fishing altogether for 30 years until I was invited on a Grenada trip to catch some real hogs. I wanted to see what a 12 inch crappie looked like, as I had never seen anything like that in NE AR. Needless to say I was hooked. I know the G&F have tried several things over the years to help the size but up until now about all they have is a list of things that don't work at Lake Charles. For my part I am about ready to vote with oldduckhunter to drain it if they can't at least get us back to "good 8 inchers". I know that Grenada's weather is slightly warmer several months out of the year and this is out of the G&F's control. There's got to be an answer as Poinsette average size is considerable bigger from what I have caught in the past few years, not say Poinsette don't need some work also. What about it G&F, what steps are in the works to improve the average size at Lake Charles?

the g&f is not going to do any thing to help crappie in no lake period. if it dont benefit them it want get done i know of 2 or 3 lakes here in so.east ar they have ruined. i think g&f needs rebuild!!!!!!!!

i bet it it were to do over a lot of people that voted for the 1/8th percent tax to go to the woodypeckerwood people they wouldn't vote for it now. like everyone else they could handle their money better but they have found many ways to waste your tax money. mo did the same thing except mo did buy up hundreds of thousands of acres of land for the sportsmen in that state.

100 to 200 brush piles would help,bare bottom lakes want produce enough food for larger fish.If they don't do something in time the park will close b/c of profit lose.ALOT of people do not travel to charles no more which also hurts the area in profit also.They even letting horse shoe on rainly brake get to low,dam needs fixing.
I haven't hunted in years but still bought my hunting lic. until two years ago,I no longer buy them b/c of no interest in helping the panfisherman in my area.Bass,catfish and trout get top honors in stocking b/c they are the easiest to manage.Takes a wise person to manage panfish which it seems we're lacking that person in g&f. l

Originally Posted by olduckhunter

i bet it it were to do over a lot of people that voted for the 1/8th percent tax to go to the woodypeckerwood people they wouldn't vote for it now. like everyone else they could handle their money better but they have found many ways to waste your tax money. mo did the same thing except mo did buy up hundreds of thousands of acres of land for the sportsmen in that state.

When they started getting their funding from general revenues, they quit being responsive to the needs of the average sportsman. Starting to like Sheffield Nelson more and more.

I know this is an old thread but I just ran across it. We are still working on Lake Charles crappie population. We are trying to gather as much info as we can to figure out why the fish are not growing much after age-1. The age-1 growth is good but they basically stop growing after that. It is likely a density dependent problem. There appears to be high recruitment of crappie but not enough food to allow the high number of crappie to reach greater sizes. Studies have shown that saugeye are great at controlling and fixing a stunted crappie population; however, we cannot stock them in Lake Charles because the saugeye could escape and start breeding with the sauger in the Black River. We will continue to gather info on this population this coming fall. We are going to be looking at specifically at diets this fall.

There was question about why do drawdowns. Drawdowns have several benefits and drawbacks. The main drawback is access to the water and it causes the fish to move to different areas of the lake than normal. Benefits include the following things: 1) Drawdowns allow prey species that are in shallow habitats to be more vulnerable to predations. This fish likely grow very little and are not benefiting the lakes. The predator species including crappie feed on these prey species in the fall. This extra energy storage allows the fish to have more reserve left to make it through the winter months thus more energy can be put into reproduction in the following spring, 2) while the lake is down, terrestrial vegetation begins to grow. When flooded, it gives cover to the new hatched fry. 3) As the vegetation decomposes, it increases the amount of nutrients in the water, which increase the amount of plankton in the water. More plankton means more food for the fry and species that utilize plankton like shad, 4) while the shoreline is exposed; it allows the bottom to harden. When flooded, there is more hard bottom for species that spawn utilizing beds (crappie, bass, and bluegill), and 5) exposing the lake bottom allows the muck layer in the lake to harden. This reduces the filling in rate of the lake. All lakes are going to fill in one day but this help to reduce this rate. This is just a few of the benefits of the drawdowns.

Sunfish populations are hard to manage. They often exhibit boom or bust reproduction. This type of reproduction can lend itself to stunting. Some of the best sunfish lakes like Lake Hogue often times have numerous small bass. We are currently managing Lake Hogue for sunfish.

Please remember that we are dealing with Mother Nature. She does what she wants all the time. We try our best to manage the fish populations to best of our abilities. I am not saying we are always correct but that doesn’t mean we don’t try hard and care about the fisheries of the state. There are many of the AGFC biologists that are just as diehard fishermen and we want to catch a bunch of fish too.

Like always, we are here if you have any questions or want to know more about what are doing around the area lakes.

Thanks mojo rig for the update. Do shock surveys show all other species doing ok on Charles?