Thread: How many fish to cull out a limit?

It varies on Conway. Some days you wont catch anything under 11 inches and you can get a limit pretty quick. Other days, you will catch a hundred dinks with few or no keepers. Then there are days in between where you catch a little of both. And finally, there are those days where you fish for hours without a bite, smash all of your rods over your knee, throw your tackle in the water and swear you're never going to fish again, afterwards, you spend the whole drive home concocting a story about how ninjas jumped you and stole all of your fish and tackle!! True story!!


C.J.

yea them ninjas are some bad fishing tackle stealing boys

It's hard to say but I don't throw back many and I refuse to keep anything under 10" even on the worst day.
Even a 10" fish I would consider pretty small.
I have never thrown back 30 fish on Lake Conway.

Last summer we caught 5 dinks to one keeper a couple of times on Nimrod....other times it was 1 to 1.....Blue Mtn and especially the Petite Jean River has an abundance of small fish not sure that is a bad thing.....

Originally Posted by Basscat1

Last summer we caught 5 dinks to one keeper a couple of times on Nimrod....other times it was 1 to 1.....Blue Mtn and especially the Petite Jean River has an abundance of small fish not sure that is a bad thing.....

Nimrod.. Yes! One day we caught hundreds trying to keep a mess.
Best thing to do there is move to a different spot.

Pine Creek over in OK is known for smaller ones but as the spawn nears the bigger ones show up, by bigger I mean 12-maybe 14" fish. Now here in SW AR on Gillham, Dequeen, and Dierks lakes if you can manage 15 or 20 crappie your doing good but than again they run from 12"-16+ right time of the year but most always 12" fish and stack up quick once you start putting the knife to them. I've never for the life of me figured out why our G&F won't net the lil ones in plentiful lakes and spread them around to the lakes where numbers are less??? I've been meaning to do it for them but never have due to being able to hit em just right and keep them alive in the process. They sure don't mind trapping out our turkeys for bears, cats and other creatures we don't need! I think it's a conspiracy myself.....all about the $$$. Either way there are lakes with great numbers of small fish most of the time while some lakes lack. Some lakes you might catch 8 or 10 fish before you put one in the box due to size and others they all are boxers.

Sometimes I swear those ninjas live on Conway

It is like they said on Nimrod, lots of throwbacks . But it can change and some lakes like Dardanelle you can go without culling any one time and later cull more than you keep. Most times if I catch several short fish and few or no good ones I'm on the move no matter which lake.