Jerry Combs Lake

Due to work I really do not have time to go on any long fishing trips, I live in the far southeast corner of MO and have been (bank) fishing there the last few weeks and have caught quite a few 6-10 inch crappie. From my understanding they are not much bigger than this and due to overpopulation they are not getting as big as they should. This lake is roughly 150 acres with very nice largemouth, fat hand sized bluegill and an abundant number of black crappie along with channel catfish. I was wondering if any of you other fishermen here in MO have fished this lake and what size crappie have you pulled out of here? I was talking to an older gentleman that was fishing on the floating dock there and he informed me that the conservation officer encouraged him to keep any crappie worth cleaning that he caught. I caught 18 on Monday and 22 on Tuesday before the storms started blowing in. I will take pictures next time but the dinks that I catch are nothing to the very large crappie that you put in your livewell. My question to any conservation officer pertaining to this lake whats the biggest crappie you think is in this lake in way of how long they have been in there and so on. The biggest I have heard being caught out of there is 12 inches but have yet to seen one that big come out of there.

When crappie are stunted, like they apparantly are in Jerry Combs Lake, very few of them will get large. The vast majority will be under 9 inches. Typically, less than 1% will be larger. Harvest is necessary to reduce the numbers and allow the remaining crappie to grow. Think of it like a wood lot. If you have trees every foot they will not grow very large. But thin the trees out to a spacing of 10 feet and they will grow much larger. If you are fishing a lake with no length limit on crappie and a daily limit of 30, the manager is trying to thin the population out. Please take your limit when you can. It takes a little practice to filet an 8-inch crappie, but it's not too hard.

Yeah this lake has a no size limit and a daily limit of 30. I don't really feel bad about thinning out the population even though I think it would be hard to do in a lake so small. I usually catch 4:1 ratio of male to female but all of the females no matter their size are full of eggs. Since the spawn is starting I am catching them mostly 3-5 foot off of the bank with a jig underneath a float about 18-24 inches deep in 4 foot of water. I can only hope that one day these fish will gain size. I do my part whenever the weather permits. I am sure the largemouth bass are helping in thinning out that population too since there are some pretty big bass in this lake caught 4 last year that were over 22 inches and alot of 18+ keepers (bass do not appeal to my appetite) so I end up throwing all of those back.