A stupid question, I guess.
Why do slot limits for bass work, and a slot limit for crappie would not????
???
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A stupid question, I guess.
Why do slot limits for bass work, and a slot limit for crappie would not????
???
Not a stupid question at all. I actually investigated this various topic a few years ago. Protective Slot Limits are designed to protect and enhance a naturally self sustaining population by protecting the sizes that have the most reproductive success, while also creating a larger size to harvest. The short answer is that crappie grow fast and die young in most situations. I tried to model this situation for Conways crappie population. The problem was trying to match up what size of fish you want to protect. I chose 9-11. Growth is so fast in that range that some fish grow that in one year. So it wouldn't be doing much help. I wouldn't really want to shift the slot too much lower because then it would just act like a minimum length limit. If you shifted it higher, anglers would get mad because you were protecting fish that are keepers. This is my prospective on protective slot limits on crappie on my lakes. Another Biologist may see it differently on their lakes with different conditions. But in D-10 it wouldn't pan out. Thanks for the question. I needed to wake up.
Here is my "expert" opinion with no biologist training and only one lake in mind.
Lake Charles (A fine example of why minimum length limits do not work on every lake, and the result of trying it)
Limit 50.
35 of those must be shorter than 8 inches. Or maybe no limit on crappie shorter than 8 inches and a limit of 20 on crappie over 8 inches.
Ya'll are doing awesome on all the rest of the lakes I fish.
Nimrod Lake could use a higher limit or none except on 10'' and over Crappie IMO for a year or two.:twocents