Crappie are.prolifoc spawners. Without harvest, almost all crappie populations would be stunted. If a lake has too many good spawns in a row, the majority of the fish will be smaller (Nimrod). Research has shown that optimal crappie populations get off a good spawn once every 3 years. Biologist can examine this by looking st the residuals of a catch curve or by looking at the number of Age-1 crappie produced each year. Unfortuanlty it is almost imposible to the this kind of data and estimate the number of spawning fish there were in a given year. There are too many variables that affect the success of a spawning fish. A few variables are: correct water temperature, prey density, sunfish density, harvest rate removing males off of nests, etc...

The short answer to your original question is yes, most lakes can handle the pressure. Some lakes have a little too much pressure during certain times of the year. These lakes generally have very high exploitation rates, such as Lake Conway. If the lake also has good fast growth, it would be a good candidate for a minimum length limit. If not enough crappie were removed from these systems, we would not have optimal growth. Let's all hope that the catch-and-release mentality doesn't completely infiltrate the crappie crowd. A little doesn't hurt anything, but if too many people threw back their crappie, things would go south in a hurry. Crappie are NOT bass!