I would tend to agree that the problem is too many crappie. Seems like spawns are healthy. I think the bigger lakes (and river) just seem to be better for supporting large crappie. Probably something to do with abundance of bait fish. Smaller lakes (and EF is not that big compared to KY Lake) just seem to get out of balance easier. But what do I know

I'm hoping they get bigger again at EF. And it was only a few years ago I was catching decent size crappie there. Not giants but plenty of keepers.