With the mushy mustard colored eggs,

Good luck hope you catch some nice samples:) thanks for the response , I along with everyone on here, I'm sure appreciates the info and biology lesson.

Also, I'd like to add that it doesn't take every fish in the lake to have a fantastic spawn to keep the population going strong. A lot of people stress out over a few fish not spawning in the part of the lake that they fish. This doesn't mean that in some other arm conditions might have been a whole lot better. We don't recommend folks stocking crappie in ponds less than 25 acres bc in smaller bodies with too much spawning success they will quickly overrun and stunt. There is such thing as "too much of a good thing". That being said this springs weather has been a bummer for fishermen and biologists due to the up and own temps.

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Originally Posted by D10

This will happen with all sizes. Crappie are like people, they are all a little different. If they started producingtheir eggs latter than the rest, they may still try to spawn this year. I will be doing some single pole sampling tomorrow on Conway. Hopefully I will be able to judge the condition of the females over there.

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Do you eat samples? Lmao. :)

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Originally Posted by BigRiverMarine

Do you eat samples? Lmao. :)

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It would be an incomplete single line sample without the taste test being conducted as well.

D10, with not all fish spawning, would we see a drop off in fish numbers in 3 years?

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Originally Posted by LRJoe1

D10, with not all fish spawning, would we see a drop off in fish numbers in 3 years?

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One year with a poor spawn is no big deal. In fact, some research conduncted in Mississippi, suggests that there is an optimal spawning cycle with crappie. In other words, if you had too many good spawns in a row, it could be a bad thing (as BigBen pointed out). If there were two or more years with a poor spawn, we would need to be a little more worried. That is the good thing about crappie, they are such a prolific spawner, that one good year following a poor year, will more than make up for the mssing crappie. Think about it this way. In many systems there is only so much forage to go around for all of the fish. When there are fewer mouths to feed, from time to time, this leaves more forage for the remaining fish. We see the same effect rebounding off of a drawdown. The remaining fish get fattened up when the lake refills and the shad reproduce. It is an all you can eat buffet for the remaining fish.

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Originally Posted by D10

It would be an incomplete single line sample without the taste test being conducted as well.

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BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

You need any help shocking? Lmao

I have cleaned quite a few like this recently and like D10's response jigtime

Almost every fish we caught Thursday had eggs..........small, medium, large, huge.........didn't matter. Didn't see the mushy big egg sacs, though........just normal eggs, like they were going to drop within the next week or two, or three. Can't say we kept a single male......although we threw back about 100 fish.........

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Originally Posted by Buckrub

Almost every fish we caught Thursday had eggs..........small, medium, large, huge.........didn't matter. Didn't see the mushy big egg sacs, though........just normal eggs, like they were going to drop within the next week or two, or three. Can't say we kept a single male......although we threw back about 100 fish.........

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Buckrub - where were you fishing? Dardanelle?