Quote Originally Posted by pab1981 View Post
So is it fair to say Kentucky has more age 5 and 6 fish than Barkley right now but those fish may not be growing as fast as Barkley fish?
Thats correct. Barkley fish tend to grow a little faster anyway, but this year was very good. The 5 and 6 year old fish are primarily black crappie in kentucky lake, so they have a little bit better chance of surviving to older ages since they are harder to catch than the white crappie which predominate in lake barkley.

However, trapnets are notorious for being good at catching small fish, but not as good at catching the largest fish. So even though we set a lot of nets and caught a lot of crappie, there is still some variation in the catch rates of older fish that we might have missed. Its also the case that older isn't always better. Some 6 year old fish can be 10 inches and some 1 year olds can be over 12 inches.