How many is too many kept?

[Spoonminnow]

Do you keep the bigger ones & thus leave more baitfish for the smaller ones to eat & get bigger

That kind of depends on the predator population and food chain. Larger fish eat smaller fish or whatever they can swallow. My local lake has pickerel, bass, large white perch and some large crappie and sunfish. Do larger predator fish prefer larger prey? If so, a larger bigger predator population can be just as detrimental to older panfish in numbers destroyed as anglers.

I fear that's the problem with the stunted gills and crappie at another lake - too many large fish devouring too many +3 y.o. panfish. Smaller fish will always be targeted by slightly larger predator fish, which includes crappie, and there will always be a larger number of young fish in a body of water closer to the year they were hatched.

But one thing is for certain: some type of survey is necessary for any body of water that may need regulating. Slot and size limits can't be applied to crappie as they are to bass because smaller crappie are of no use to meat anglers. Once a special regulation is put into effect, it would need another survey years down the road to make sure it is still needed. Very few states have the resources to do surveys on thousands of lakes and general regulations can be the least effective means (or do worse) at protecting fish.

A perfect example in NY: two anglers can keep 50 crappie per day in a body of water fished five days a week which results in 250 crappie taken in five days. Multiply 125 fish per angler by 15 anglers x five days and that equals 1875 fish over 9" (no one keeps smaller fish). Remember, that number is for only 5 days, not one week!

Depending on lake acreage and cover and spawn success, that can mean the decimation of an older fish population in just a few years in smaller waters. One lake I fish had most weed cover striped by an overpopulation of hybrid carp introduced by home owners. Now there are far less decent size crappie than ever before and stunted fish are the norm; and this doesn't even take into account the overpopulation of prolific white perch which can be very bad for other fish species.