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Crappie fishing is the reason I have my closest friend. He and I would love to start a club devoted to crappie fishing on Patoka Lake. Crappie fishing is our passion and without it, well, we may have never crossed paths. We want to join others and share our passion for chasing slabs, build friendships and comradery within this sport we love.
Let us know if you would like to join!
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I agree Wannabe! It will not be about the competition. I want it to be a gathering of friends new and old. I suggest the first Saturday of every month we meet at a pavilion in the park for a fish fry, corn hole etc.. during which if some want to fish and come back in the afternoon to provide for the fry even better...
I will be posting our first meeting date soon.
Good luck putting together a club. We spent the last 3 summers camping at Patoka. Decided to change it up this year and keep boat & camper there this year. If we manage to get there, we will try to stop in for 1 of your gatherings.
Meant, not keep boat & camper there
Patoka has crappie??
Sent from my Z983 using Crappie.com Fishing mobile app
yep too many of'em they don't grow much and need to be thinned out :RoflQuote:
Originally Posted by Locator79
Had a game warden that checked me once tell me not to throw the small ones back. He said to throw them on the bank if we didn't want to keep'em
We sure caught a bunch of dinks, only a few over 11 inches. If I can figure out how to post a picture, I would post my best. I was too excited to measure so not sure on length.
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There are some good fish in Patoka!
wish you luck on your"club". i think most are leery about things like this though. sometimes these things have an underlying purpose. i would start by meeting up on the lake together and fishing. then people can get to know what its all about first hand. that way they can see if its what they want to join in on, or its just a way for losers to get peoples spots from them. lol
When we lived in Michigan, I asked about their gathering, we met a group of great people and we even fish if we are not telling story's or eating. Look at the post on Michigan site, the post has a lot of great information on a gathering. No losers in that club.
We moved to Angola Indiana area, I would be interested in a gathering, I'm not really a tournament guy.
been to a few gatherings from a couple of sites over the years. like you said they can be great fun. thats what i mean about how the "club" starts. people are more willing to just go fish with a bunch of like minded people, than go meet up to fish and "join a club". you guys should start an every (whatever)evening, meet n fish. the club will make its self from that a lot of times. i didnt mean to sound negative about the idea itself.
That's interesting and is what I heard from one of the fishery people at IDNR somewhere. When you have so many crappies and they have very slow growth rates it means that there is not enough food to feed them all. If you can't give them more food then thin them out. The Gizzard shad are only small enough for the smaller crappie to eat for a short period of time. And the Gizzard Shad grow too big for the smaller crappie to eat. The smaller crappie starts out on small insect aquatic and terrestrial and then eat smaller fry and minnows. Evidently, Patoka Lake doesn't have enough food for these crappies to grow bigger You have to wade through a lot of 7 to 8-inch long crappie before you can find the bigger ones.Quote:
Originally Posted by wannabe fisherman
when I had a small garden pond the people at the pond store told me if I wanted my fish to grow to their full size to change the water by about 1/3rd every year. Said the fish emit some kind of enzyme that will stunt their growth. I wonder if that could have anything to do with small fish also. I know there's flow in a lake but still I wonder about it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Moveon
Too many shad and I also blame loss of all the weed cover in the lake. Patoka used to have really great weed lines all over and that gave your fry great cover from predators. I have seen schools of shad 12-14” big.
Not sure about fish enzymes but fish do poop and pee and the nitrates that they emit can accumulate to high levels in a small coy pond or an aquarium. Patoka Lakes water volume and diverse ecosystem can take up the nitrates from the fish and use it as food. The nitrogen cycle is taught in schools. Nitrogen is a limiting nutrient and is recycled through the food chain. There are nitrogen-fixing bacteria that can use the fish poop as their own food. That's not the case in a small pond with a plastic liner. This is why you have plants in the coy ponds. The plants can take up the nitrogen and use it for food. There must be a balance in the ecosystem of the pond.Quote:
Originally Posted by wannabe fisherman
Keep a few of the small crappie and examine them to see what they are eating. Cut them open and examine the stomach contents. These small crappies are not able to open their mouths (gullets) large enough to eat a big shad. Now if Patoka had Threadfin shad instead of Giggard Shad the crappie would be able to grow much faster as the threadfin shad are smaller in size and can be eaten easier by smaller crappie and larger crappie.
Gizzard shad can grow to up to 18" in length and that's hard for a small crappie to eat.
Again I'm not sure about what enzymes he's talking about. Weird things happen to mammal populations when they get too large. But fish live in schools according to age size. They probably run out of food before anything else. The carrying capacity of the lake area limits the fish population and size distribution of the fish.
shhhh