During the 2018 crappie.com tournament, you guys were kind enough to allow us to collect some data on the fish you weighed in. First I’ll go over the results of the fish caught in the tournament, and then I will talk a bit about what we saw in our trapnetting and the overall trends for both lakes.

In total, we were able to age 85 crappie. The majority of the fish were from kentucky lake.
Kentucky lake age breakdown from tournament:
Age 2: 7 white crappie, 9 black crappie.
Age 3: 21 white crappie, 5 black crappie.
Age 4: 28 white crappie, no black crappie
Age 5: 1 white crappie, 2 black crappie.
Age 7: 1 black crappie.
Lake Barkley breakdown from tournament:
Age 1: 6 white crappie, 1 black crappie
Age 2, age 3, age 4: 1 white crappie from each age class.
As you can see, the white crappie caught in lake barkley were quite a bit younger than those caught in kentucky lake. So lets take a look at the lake specific growth differences and see how they compare to a study from 37 years ago.
Kentucky lake white crappie growth from 2018 and 1982:
2018 1982
Age1: 3.9” 3.07”
Age2: 7.4" 7.44”
Age3: 9.1” 9.17”
Age4: 10.0” 11.65”
Age5: 10.4 13.5”
Kentucky Lake Black crappie growth from 2018 and 1982:
2018 1982
Age1: 4.0" untested because there weren’t any
Age2: 6.8"
Age3: 8.3"
Age4: 9.6"
Age5: 10.3"
Age6: 11.3"
Age7: 11.7"
Lake Barkley white crappie growth from 2018 and 1982:
2018 1982
Age 1: 4.0" 3.15"
Age2: 8.6" 6.5"
Age3: 10.5" 9.06"
Age4: 11.7" 11.02"
Lake Barkley Black crappie growth from 2018:
Age 1: 3.6"
Age 2: 8.0"
Age 3: 7.7" (only 1 fish as a sample size).

As you can see, Kentucky Lake white crappie growth is a bit slower now than in 1982 for those older fish. This is particularly true in Jonathan creek. Lake Barkley growth rates are actually at a high point right now. (I chose 1982 because it’s the oldest year I had readily available, but growth trends are usually really stable when viewed from 1985-present).
Relative weights (fish plumpness) of crappie for Lake Barkley crappie are above average for a crappie population, which I’m sure you’re all aware of if you’ve been fishing there lately. Kentucky Lake crappie are in below average condition, but did improve this year over last year. I fully expect their condition to continue to rise based on shad numbers and the mild winter we are having. Lower flows next spring and summer would be helpful for our plankton, but its not looking very likely at this point.
On a positive note, both TWRA and KDFWR saw good numbers of age-0 fish in the fall of 2018. Couple that with a mild winter and we should see a good year class coming on in a couple of years.
One trend to expect this spring and next spring will be a higher ratio of black to white crappie. You may want to factor that into your fishing to maximize the filets in your freezer. Generally speaking you see better white crappie spawns in high rainfall years and better black crappie spawns in low rainfall years. The 2016 and 2017 year classes were both weak, but were dominated by black crappie rather than white crappie so this will be the trend for a couple of years.