Jessica Baumann's Presentation Handout at the Crappie.com fishfry

From reading another post about Jordan Lake fishing, I thought some of you would be interested in seeing the handout that Jessica gave us a couple of weeks ago. It's three pages long and I have scanned it for everyone to see.

I think the second chart is good news in that the number of 10-11 inch fish almost doubled from 2012.
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This was an encouraging page. The harvest-sized numbers are still below average, but it looks like the lake is on the way back to normal. Note that the percentage of two year-old fish is 43%. That is what most people are probably catching right now.
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Jessica said the health of our crappie are fine.
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It certainly is encouraging news Dennis... hopefully it will continue to trend in the right direction. Thanks for posting the info.

Thanks for the info

Thanks for sharing. Jordan is on the way.

I was at the presentation by Ms Baumann also and at first was impressed by the numbers she had prepared but as I think more about the report I can find nothing that her group is doing to improve the crappie fishing in NC. Anyone with a computer or a "high dollar" calculator can crunch the numbers of data provided by the netting or from file data and prepare graph/charts to show the crappie population curve. As Monk said if you don,t catch any fish one year, the next year you can catch a number of 4/6 inch fish and the next year a good number. of keepers, it doesn't take a fisheries expert to tell you that the crappie population is improving. I also heard a question asked about stocking shad if another die off happened and and I think she said they would probably not get involved in stocking and if they did would not stock more than 2400 (I may be wrong on this number but I do remember thinking that wouldn't be a drop in the bucket for a lake the size of Jordan. Can anyone enlighten me about anything Ms Baumann department was actually doing to improve crappie fishing> I hope several people that was in attendance will chime with their take on the report...

Jessica's hand-out tells us there is a large population of 6, 7, 8, and 9 inch fish with a few 10 inchers and some rare instances of 11 inches and a very few 12 plus. I know of nothing that is being done in NC to improve Crappie fishing anywhere in the state, Falls, High Rock (Yadkin Chain) and Catawba chain. For sure the local city water resivors have no real fishing quality for any species!

Monk

With the stagnated economy, I don't see any chance of the legislature appropriating money to help with the crappie population. The trout fisherman in the mountains figured out a self-sustaining system to re-stock the rivers with trout. I just don't see the general public voting for a special crappie license for Piedmont lakes. Also, the fact is the largemouth and striped bass guys have a higher priority then we do as crappie fisherman.

I can tell you that Jessica has very little flexibility in her budget. One thing that she told us was to attend the Wildlife meetings. Public hearings are scheduled around the state. This process was established by the NC Wildlife to give the public a way to voice concerns about the fish and game populations in our state. Unless we have another shad kill soon, the crappie population will increase and so will the size.

This forum could be a good place to float some ideas about how to help increase the size of crappies in Jordan. One of the questions asked was to we need a 12-inch limit? Is that something we would be willing to back as a group? I don't think the support necessary is there right now, but things like this need to be discussed and if there seems to be consensus, then we see about approaching Wildlife to look into it? What are other ideas? Set a few Saturday's aside to have as a catch and kill perch days? They are hurting the population.

I was amazed that NC has no method of genetics testing. Jessica stated that NC sent their fish to SC for genetics testing. One would think that with NC State student population of 36,000 and a Fisheries Biology Department that genetics testing would be available. Sometimes since the Textile and Furniture industries went offshore, I wonder what this state supported university is really doing other than asking me as an alumni for denotations.

Monk

Does anyone know how much revenue comes into NC for fishing, hunting and other related licenses?

Monk

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Originally Posted by monkscrappie

Does anyone know how much revenue comes into NC for fishing, hunting and other related licenses?

Monk

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http://www.ncwildlife.org/News/NewsA...7/Default.aspx

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Originally Posted by JordanLimit

What are other ideas? Set a few Saturday's aside to have as a catch and kill perch days? They are hurting the population.

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That's a great idea. The SC guys do this from time to time certain times of they year on Lake Wylie and not only are the perch bigger and less populated but the crappie are better size.

From what I saw last Tuesday, I am not sure hook and line and cast nets would reduce the population very much.

Monk

I was in a cove sat nite that had the fish traps in it :dono what they are checkin now

Quote:

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Originally Posted by monkscrappie

From what I saw last Tuesday, I am not sure hook and line and cast nets would reduce the population very much.

Monk

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I saw the same thing sat nite for every one crappie I hooked I would catch 5 white perch

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Originally Posted by mac crappie

I was in a cove sat nite that had the fish traps in it :dono what they are checkin now

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Who do these traps belong to?

Monk

I guess the wildlife people there was 4 r 5 set in the cove

In light of the Proposed Rule change to reduce size limit to 8 inches, I wanted to bring this data back up. If you look at the facts, 2-year old crappie are in the 8 inch range. I think we should stay with the 10-inch range until we get more data showing us we need to be harvesting 8 inch fish.

Remember the reason we were meeting with Jessica, Wildlife Fisheries biologist for Jordan at the time, was because of the massive shad kill-off in winter of 2011. The result was a massive crappie starvation because not enough forage fish to live on.

10" seems to be the magic number that biologists in other states have used. Not sure why it would be any different here in NC.