Thread: Keepers

Lol !! That's funny I don't care what ya say !

Originally Posted by dblevens

If crappie die of old age in 8 years, and I've got a pond that hardly ever gets fished, how come they've been 7" long for the last 20 years, and you never see a funeral procession?

I'm thinking the next camp needs to be at Doug's pond. 30 fish weigh in, plus a cleaning competition. First one finished cleaning 30, 7inch crappie divided by the weight of the pile of fillets. Lowest number wins (this would encourage a competitor to get as much meat off those 7 inchers as possible). Next year, Doug would be catching slabs 8 inches, 9's and maybe even some 10's.

This morning I couldn't even spell biawluhgist, and now I are one. I bet Matt is gonna be calling me if he runs into something hard to figure out.

Originally Posted by RCC

Thought they were doing this on Conway with a 10 inch minimum. I haven't heard how this is working out. How long has that been in effect? It may take a few years before you see good numbers of good sized fish. Dardanelle, I'm thinking, would be harder to manage as a trophy lake due to it being a river system and not confined.

A 10 inch limit is just to allow 8-9 inchers to make it to keeper size...It's not a trophy limit, the 10 inch limit has only been in effect on Conway for a little over a year...to early to tell? A 12 inch limit allows keeper crappie to have a chance to make Trophy size. Dardanelle is about the same size as Grenada with a dam or dams and is managed to stay at a flood control level through out the year by the COE, Grenada also has a dam and has much the same depths and two river systems. Dardanelle is managed to stay at the same level as best possible mainly for barge traffic. Don't see what confined or a river system has to do with it, as Those MS lakes are set up much the same way on river systems. Chicot would never make it because everybody knows the Asian Flying Carp now own that lake and it will never be as good as it's "hey days" before they got in there. The same thing is starting to happen with the PB Harbor. You can also see that the pressure is starting to take effect on Lake Wash...How many 3's were caught this year On Wash during a CM Tourney? But at least MS is trying to counteract that by putting new regulations on Wash. I was talking to a buddy who said I'll bet if the AGFC would go to some of those MS towns with Crappie lakes and take a good look at how much money is brought into the state and what a economy boost trophy crappie fishing is for those areas, I would be willing to bet they would not think a 12" limit and 15 per person limit isn't that bad after all. Ya I know some would say well they just got better nutrients in those systems, and better habitat. This may be true but I would disagree that Dardanelle has that bad of nutrients or habitat to prohibit it from becoming a World Class Crappie fishing trophy lake.... what MS has, is better management and protection for the resource even if it means bringing the Limit of 15 12 incher's down too ten 12 incher's then that is what they will do. They have figured it out in MS. Folks will drive a long ways to catch some real Big-guns.

I did go back an read my post, and it did sound "pompus". My sincere apologies. I will delete.

Thanks so much for calling my attention to it.

What I meant to say was the Yalobusha is no comparison to the Arkansas. You are a good fisherman and catch more and bigger than I even think about catching. Some of us don't mind catching a small fish because we had rather catch and keep several 10 inchers as hang a 3lber on the wall. I still don't see how you can guarantee an abundance of "trophy" fish simply by setting a minimum size limit to 12 inches. It appears to me, if this were true, there would be no need for anyone to get a college education to manage a fishery this way.

I sure don't know, and I absolutely do not mean to be offensive in any manner. As I indicated in the other post that I deleted, I don't have a clue whether being on a river has anything at all to do with crappie growth due it getting completely over the dams last year and in 2011 (I think).

I do apologize again, and thank you for calling that to my attention. We can agree on that if we don't agree on a 12 inch length limit.

Again, I did PM before reading your last post and hope in it I was not offensive. I will go back and review.

Will just set the hook... and move along RCC. Think we have said our peace. Thanks for your input.

I'm good. I greatly respect your opinion and feel free to call me on what I post anytime. I was clearly out of line.

Length limits only work with fast growth and most times lower recuritment . They tried it on Nimrod years ago and only had fish stacking up just under 10''

This is a tough regulation to predict the outcome since you are protecting all fish 12" and smaller. Such an agresive MLL may have unintended and negative consequences. Rather than hear my point of view on this topic again, I encourage anyone who is interested in learning more about MLL (minimum length limits) to Google the document in the screen shot below. It reviews a ton of literature on the topic. The literature review was done by some Wisconsin biologists and primarily focuses on black crappie and northern latitude lakes. However, much of the reviewed data was collected on lakes in states around us and the points that they are making can be applied to Arkansas. If you would like to discuss this specific issue further with a biologist, contact Frank Leone at the Russellville Regional Office, 877-967-7577. And as always if you want to talk to me about one of my lakes, you know how to get a hold of me. Thanks.