Local pond is looking good for Ice fishing

[Agronomist_at_IA]

Not bad for a small gravel pit of 14 acres, with a max depth of about 12 feet. caught this the other day. I'm finally starting to see some good size crappies since they brought them up about 3 years ago when the DNR was re-doing a small pond/lake at Paullina.Been seeing a lot in the 8 in range,and I have been keeping a few of them so the pond doesn't get over populated and stunt them. Finnally, I can get a little excited that the pond has more to offer then a few nice bluegill & small bass.

Question:What size is your minnimum size to keep and eat a crappie.

[crappiebuster]

Nice to see some decent crappies in Iowa yet. Especially small water crappies those always taste better. Wonder if the new regs this year will help people from cleaning them out?

My minimum is 8 for bluegills.. And 10 for crappies worth keeping.I have seen people keep everything though. You just look in their bucket and shake your head.

[Agronomist_at_IA]

Nice to see some decent crappies in Iowa yet. Especially small water crappies those always taste better. Wonder if the new regs this year will help people from cleaning them out?

My minimum is 8 for bluegills.. And 10 for crappies worth keeping.I have seen people keep everything though. You just look in their bucket and shake your head.

I know what you mean, last winter I was up at Spirit Lake, and I swear some guys where keeping Perch that were smaller then the minnows I was using.

[WinterHaven]

I keep them between 9-1/2 to 10", but it is a shame to see alot of people keeping them at any size.

[Agronomist_at_IA]

I keep them between 9-1/2 to 10", but it is a shame to see alot of people keeping them at any size.

I came across an article awhile back that if Crappie are place in a body of water which less then 25 acres, that they need to be managed. If not enough are harvested they will over populate and all the fish will be stunted, not to mention that the bass will be to due to them going after the same food. Now I don't know what the harvest should be, but I don't think harvesting fish is a bad thing if it is within the limits of managing the body of water to create quality size fish.

[SP180]

Actually it is not a bad thing for people to take a number of small dinky fish out of a lake. If some one has a bucket full of minnow size perch, then the lake probably has to many to began with and needs the little ones to go.

[goblueM]

the problem is when people keep every fish they catch, regardless of size

[half-dutch]

Originally Posted By: WinterHaven

I keep them between 9-1/2 to 10", but it is a shame to see alot of people keeping them at any size.

I came across an article awhile back that if Crappie are place in a body of water which less then 25 acres, that they need to be managed. If not enough are harvested they will over populate and all the fish will be stunted, not to mention that the bass will be to due to them going after the same food. Now I don't know what the harvest should be, but I don't think harvesting fish is a bad thing if it is within the limits of managing the body of water to create quality size fish.

The key is the size of the body of water. Stunting happens in the tiny bodies like farm ponds when the predator/prey/competition balance goes out of whack. That takes controlled harvest and management of at least some species, plus in most bodies keeping the predator/prey balance simple enough to allow that. IOW not stocking every kind of fish imaginable in the first place. Iowa DNR has been studying that as intensely as anyone. Also check out Illinois where the bluegill is supposed to be the state fish. They have done some very interesting work on restricting harvest at far back as the last decade. Both states' DNR websites are a good place to start reading.

Panfish stunt in larger lakes is as often over harvest as anything, reducing the necessary longevity for panfish to reach larger size, especially in colder climates. In Minnesota/Wisconsin and northern Iowa it takes a bluegill about a year/inch to reach 8 inches or more. BUT severely restricting human harvest allows that when the lake is even very moderately sized. Both bluegill and crappie respond by producing dramatically increased sizes when human harvest is significantly curtailed. Check out the Heritage Fishing lakes in Minnesota where motors and electronics are disallowed and bag limits are dramatically curtailed. Nearly every one shows a very significant increase in panfish size very quickly.

These are entirely different considerations, with probably the best distinction being whether a particular body can naturally produce decent size in more than one panfish. Most farm ponds cannot, for them you must restrict the variety of what you stock and then manage for best results in one or the other of those.

Perch need more space to size up than crappies and sunfish do, and are less clear about stunting factors. In all cases abundant food sources are necessary along with proper fry and juvenile predation, but that is less of a problem for most water bodies than improper harvest, which is the smaller bodies is usually too little harvest of something and larger bodies is usually too much harvest of everything..

It will be interesting to see whether Iowa crappies respond to new possession limits with increasing size in the next couple of years. 25 in Iowa is still very generous compared to the 10 Minnesota allows, which is still too generous for a lot of Minnesota lakes.

The bottom line is that it isn't simple enough to be reduced to any one phrase or any single management approach.