Radio Tagged Crappie

[TimY]

Pretty interesting article in the March issue of Oklahoma Game and Fish. A major university completed a radio tracking study in some major reservoirs on crappie through early winter and pre-spawn. Most crappie fishermen, including myself, always assumed crappie were a stay at home kind of fish. This study basically proves that theory wrong. The radio tagged fish traveled the entire length of the reservoir in a few days several times, and the assumed they were following baitfish and feeding aggressively before the spawn. What concerns me is during a year where the local lakes are flooded, if a majority of the fish happen to be near the dam during a prolonged water release, we could loose more fish out the gates than we thought. Now if they would do a tracking study on shad it would save us about 500 gal of gas a year. Here is the majority of the study but it's worth buying a copy and reading the entire article. May need your glasses to read this.