Quote Originally Posted by huntinslabs View Post
I dont think you will see much if anything done. Personally feel that a slot of say 10" -13" with 20 limit and 1 over slot per day might have a very slight chance of raising an eyebrow of the FWC. That said I really do not think you can hurt a fishery on the river system. Yea the big girls might become fewer in numbers as seen, but who is to say it is not just a cycle. Now the landlocked lakes, if not enough acreage, especially around all the snowbird headquarters in Lakeland, yes I imagine a hurting could be put on em. Till any legislation is passed all we can do is hope it may come full circle, but they better have their ducks in a row as heavily as Crappie reproduce. Could swing way bad with stunted fish real quick. Some places now are begging people to keep bass and they are not near as prolific as Crappie. Till then as long as someone is within the laws and only taking what they can consume, I will congratulate em on a great days fishing. Now the guys out there passing off fish to other boats and people at docks to keep fishing, that is just wrong. You can keep fishing and throw em back, everything ain't gotta go to a table. And if ya are gonna pass em off, still should not be able to take over a limit even if they went to someone else. There is my 2cents and remember Speckanator started it!
On the part about not hurting a river system fishery, I wonder if flathead cats dine on crappie? It's probably reasonable to believe they do since they certainly devour bream. Not about a crappie rebound, but according to the Georgia DNR redbreast sunfish on the Satilla River did rebound after an electrofishing program that lasted from 2007 thru 2014. They removed 47,497 invasive flathead catfish totaling 91,906 pounds. Flathead average size has declined while redbreast population has rebounded. Just wondering if this could apply to river crappie??? We have plenty of flatheads up here in the Panhandle rivers...not sure about down state.