Quote Originally Posted by Hotpepper View Post
Fished Kissimmee in January and caught a lot of fish and several big crappie, 11inches or bigger.

Not picking on you Pepper, but this just shows you what some folks consider big, others do not. Don and I are lucky and get to fish almost every week. But we cull at 12 inches. An 11 inch fish is a throw-back. And we never keep a 50 fish limit (between the two of us) anyway because we would have crappie fillets up to our ears after a while.

An yes, we measure EVERY ONE that is even close. Last week we tossed a couple of 11 7/8" fish, a bunch of 11 inchers, and scores of smaller ones. We caught 82 fish that day. Did not keep a single one.

We are not fisheries experts. I imagine some university studies have been done on sustainable crappie populations in Florida, but I have never seen anything published. It would be interesting to talk to an expert on this subject. All us ignorant fishermen can do is "speculate" (pun intended ).

Tom