KDFWR Fall Crappie Survey at KY and Barkley lakes
The past several months I have been asked how I think the crappie spawn was at Kentucky and Barkley lakes despite the flood conditions we observed about the peak time for crappie to spawn. I had an unsubstantiated opinion at the time, but now I can give you a little more of a definitive answer.
We finished our fall crappie sampling in Jonathan Creek and Donaldson Creek last week, and are looking at Blood River and Little River this week. There appears to have been a better than average spawn at both lakes.
We have been doing the same standardized sampling in these embayments since 1984. So we have a very good data base which shows us trends in the crappie populations. Considering only the age 0 crappie; the ones spawned this past spring, since 1984 there has been six outstanding year classes. This year would be number 4 on this list. Now, this is not an exact science, and sometimes we may miss the age 0 crappie when we do our sampling. This could be due to adverse water conditions. So we also look at the age 1 crappie to help us understand recruitment (year class success). The crappie produced from the spawn of 2009, which was only fair, had really good survival. Hence, that is suggested by the good numbers of 6 to 9 inch crappie showing up.
The other interesting thing we observed last week at Jonathan Creek is the white to black crappie ratio was 50/50. This ratio had been running about 20/80. I attribute the higher numbers of white crappie to the more turbid water conditions during the spring flooding.
As for the number of larger (>10") crappie; the numbers collected in our sample was down. But we expected this due to the poor spawns observed during 2005-2008.
As for Barkley, we also saw better numbers of age 0 crappie.
I expect we will see similar results in Blood River and Little River this week.
For some of you that were fishing these lakes in 1989 and 1990; well we are back there again. During the mid to late 80’s there were several poor spawns which were attributed to the drought conditions and clear water. In 1989 there was an exceptional crappie spawn. Since that time we did not ever observe back to back good spawns, but every few years there was a good spawn. These off and on good spawns have carried the fishery for the past 18 years. The past few years we observed consecutive poor spawns, similar to the trend observed in 1985-1988. So for now… take time to fish a little harder, explore new territory, change your fishing tactics, drop in a few more brush piles, throw back a few more fish, and these year classes will grow up. The age studies that we have done show that it takes about 3-4 years for a crappie to reach 10 inches.
Some of you were aware that we did stock some white crappie to help off set these recent poor spawns. In 2009 we stocked Little River and Blood River with about 30,000 (each) white crappie. About a month ago we stocked 70,000 in Blood River, but saw a high level of mortality due to the long ride from the hatchery and warmer than normal water temperature. We are working to assess how these stockings affect the population.
But, even if we do see high numbers of age 0 crappie at Blood River, we can say that it is not from the stocking, since Jonathan Creek had high numbers of these small crappie and it was not stocked.
I will report later with what we find this week. If you have any questions let me know. I know some of you are out there fishing a bunch. If you have different perspectives let me know.
Paul Rister
