Gindog,

Excellent question but difficult to answer without getting to technical. I hope this explanation works.

I looked in the annual reports for Lake Frierson because this was before my time in NE Ark. In 2007, the crappie population was sampled. That year, they sampled 2,340 crappie. The ages ranged from 0 to 4 years old. The majority (97.5%) of these fish were either age 0+ or 1+. There were no fish collected over 10 inches. Growth was extremely slow. Age 2 fish only averaged 6 inches long and Age 4 only averaged 7 inches long. This is a sure indication that the population is stunted. That doesn’t mean there aren’t bigger ones in the population. The results indicated that spawning success (success of fish hatching) was good. However, they had a hard time surviving to adulthood. Also when they did survive, they were small and slow growing. This could be due to the turbidity of the water or food availability for the smaller fish in the lake.

In 2009, we shelved stocking largemouth bass in the lake because very few of them were surviving to adulthood.

Saugeye have been used to control gizzard shad and crappie populations in Ohio and Oklahoma. This is some information from the Crappie Management Plan: “Boxrucker (1987) reported the population of crappie in Thunderbird Reservoir, Oklahoma improved after the introduction of saugeye. It appeared the improvement of crappie population structure was the result of a density dependent growth response resulting from predation on crappie by adult saugeye. Horton and Gilliland (1990) found that saugeye in Thunderbird Reservoir began feeding on crappie after reaching 350-mm (14 inches) and that crappie comprised more than 60% of the diet of saugeye greater than 525-mm (21 inches). Saugeye became significant predators of crappie after reaching 457-mm (18 inches). This information, along with concerns regarding overharvest of “needed predators” led to the implementation of an 18-inch minimum limit for Thunderbird Reservoir saugeye.” I have attached the Horton and Gilland paper http://www.seafwa.org/resource/dynam...TON-98-104.pdf

Tony,
No problem with asking. I had to look up why it was stopped anyways. So it helped me out as well. By the way, it was stopped in 2008. As for fishing for saugeye, I have heard you can jig for them or troll. That is about all I have heard from anglers.

As always, I hope this helped.