Quote Originally Posted by Luke 5:9 View Post
This is the way I see it. A black female Crappie can lay from 10,000-190,000 eggs. Lets say that there was a poor season...drought, poor water quality, harsh shad die-off...and she lays 30,000 eggs. This is now our base line. Now pretend that 60% of the eggs hatch. There is now 18,000 tiny baby crappie swimming around. Lets say that 50% of tose make it to adult size. We are down to 9,000 crappie.

9,000 crappie produced from 1 crappie per season. Whats your guess on how many female black crappie are in Lake Nimrod? No idea....1 million? If each of those produce 9,000 others, for a total of 9,000,000,000. I would say it would take a while for 100 people to take 1 limit per day for a total of 912,500 fish, to deplete the population. (25 limit in texas)

Keep in mind, I never counted male black crappie before the breed...nor did I count white crappie in any of this math.


Is this anywhere near right?
This has been my position for a number of years. This is taken into consideration, I'm sure, by the professional biologists when then make their samplings. They probably consider individual lakes, fertility of the lakes and a host of other things. Mother nature has a pretty good handle on all things in nature. As far as a "slump" that the OP is afraid of, all lakes, ponds and rivers experience cycles. For instance Sardis lake in Mississippi had a few bad years. Now it is on the upswing. Our biologists spend long years studying to become biologist. How about we let our biologist make the decisions on how to manage our fisheries to be in harmony with nature.