Quote Originally Posted by cnote View Post
Fish Taxi,
Not trying to high jack your question or pretend that I know more than a biologist, but I was wondering the same thing. I talked to my sister-in-laws husband who has a duck/fishing lease and he had the same issue, tons of small crappies. We'd go duck hunt then catch 50-100 crappie, keep them all. The last few years he's been catching a 5 gallon bucket full and keeping them all. We went duck hunting/fishing around Christmas and you could tell it's paid off. The crappie are finally getting some size to them, but he also has catfish and bass in the same lease. I'll be interested to see what the answer is from somebody who knows. But they also don't have a length limit and a 50 creel limit at Wabaunsee, makes me think they have a bunch that need thinned out, which I'm more than willing to do my part if that is what it takes.
Cnote,

Crappie can be small for a number of reasons. They may be young fish resulting from a very productive spawn that seems to overpower the rest of the larger fish in the lake causing very high "dink" to keeper ratios. The crappie may be stockpiled and slow growing (stunted) as a result of turbid water reducing predation, too much vegetation inhibiting predation, predator population out of balance causing reduced predation on the crappie, or just no predators available in the lake. If angler harvest is too high, then the crappie won't live long enough to reach the larger sizes. There may be many reasons for small crappie and sometimes the reasons are not very obvious.

Fish biologists use fish sample trend data, age and growth information, angler catch/harvest information from creel census, and other info to formulate management plans on managed waters. The "big picture" is more easily seen when you have usable data available.

It's difficult to pinpoint the reason for small crappie in a water body with only a small bit of info, but a pond/lake owner can take note of current and past conditions to get an idea of what is going on there with their crappie populations.

Hopefully you will be able to get some good info when I post the reply to the status of Wabaunsee.