Why was 2005 such a good year class of Craps?

[glow_away]

Does anyone know why this particular year class (2005) was so good around Minnesota. Was it a warm spring? I don't remember.

[goblueM]

Are you saying that the crappie fishing was excellent around the entire state of Minnesota in 2005?

Or that the 2005 year class (crappies born in 2005) are exceptionally strong across the entire state of Minnesota?

[glow_away]

Strong year class (young of the year 2005). Sorry, for not being more clear on that!

[ozzie]

I can't say that I have seen the same but then again I can't tell what year the crappies I catch were born....lol

[bbfenatic]

I can't say that I have seen the same but then again I can't tell what year the crappies I catch were born....lol

Come on Man, you don't see the '04, '05, '06...... stamp on their back right side? LOL

[glow_away]

If you look at the lake data for many crappie lakes around minnesota.

Found on the (Mn. Dnr lake finder) It shows and talks about the consistant 2005 year class being excellent. Anyway, I thought maybe someone with some knowledge of this might respond as the curiosity has been bugging me lately.

[ozzie]

I wish I could help ya...sorry for having a little fun hopefully someone out there can give you an answer. With regards to the weather you could probably find temps and wind speeds recorded in a weather tracker HSOforum somewhere on the web....Good Luck

[reinhard1]

i would call the area fisheries office and talk to someone there. they could help you. i have seen this myself. sometimes in the details of the lake survey they say that there was a strong year class for a certain species. i would thing that all the conditions were right for a good year of survival and hatching of the fry. water level, water temps, and less predator activities on the eggs themselves. sounds simple but that would be my guess. but call someone in the DNR fisheries and they could give you an answere better than mine. good luck.

[Jim Uran]

Hopefully da_cahise31 sees this, he is a wizard when it comes to panfish.

[glow_away]

No offense taken Ozzie I like joking around as much as the next guy!!

[Scott M]

I'll take a crack at it, maybe gobluem can dig up a few resources.

Year class strength can be an interesting phenomenon. I think this spring is going to be really interesting down the road as we're seeing freaky fast ice out and warming water temperatures. Right now some fish are losing up to a month of time they would normally have for egg maturation and more time in staging for the spawn. Hormonal changes that finalize egg production are triggered by a variety of phenomenon - length of day, water temperature, amount of sunlight, etc.. This year's hormonal shifts with this freaky weather could really mess up some fish.

For some species of fish, year class strength is strongly tied to environmental variables...temperature and wind. Crappies (black and white) are a couple fish that the literature points to a connection with environmental variables. Think of Upper Red Lake. An overwhelming 1995 year class dominated the lake after the collapse of walleye stocks. Had the spring of 1995 been windy or inconsistently warm or cool, we might have never seen the freaky good crappie fishing on that lake.

Other fish species year class strength is tied to size entering the winter. A couple studies have shown largemouth bass and walleyes have better survival at larger sizes entering the winter, so their year class strength is dependent upon how many growing season days they got and how well they foraged during that time.

Getting back to environmental variables, here are a couple papers that I think are really fascinating about climate and year class strength. They aren't all about crappie, but they still give you an idea about what climate means to fish. Most likely you won't be able to read them without a subscription, but you can at least scan the abstract.

What does Mt. Pinatubo have to do with walleyes?

Effect of Environmental Variables upon Crappie Young, Year-Class Strength, and the Sport Fishery

Here's one you can read in its entirety. Just a warning, this paper covers global warming and climate change. Understand that this paper was not written by a meteorologist, but by a set of well respected fish biologists. When people dismiss a change in the climate, a good litmus test is where do warmwater, coolwater, and coldwater fish assemblages show up. These fish have evolved over millions of years to a specific thermal niche. When they show up at population levels, it's no mere coincidence. Waters are warming whether people want to admit it or not. I don't want this thread to turn political, so let's leave it at that. What you should focus on with this link is how climate relates to smallmouth bass year class strength.

Effects of climate and global warming on...rn lake ontario

So, to answer the question, why was 2005 a good year class for crappies across the state? For one, I have to accept this assumption that it truly was (the OP might have just stumbled upon a couple lakes with really good year classes versus an accurate statewide trend) a strong statewide year class, but if this is true, it may have just been a spring with the right environmental conditions for good crappie recruitment. Such a phenomenon can be really hard to do across the entire state and all of its different types of lakes. More likely, certain waterbodies had the right conditions for good spawning and survival and those happen to be the lakes the OP was looking at. Cycling of crappie abundance and year class strength has been reported in the literature and observed by lots of anglers, but it's still not well understood. The lakes seen by the OP could have both been part of a 2005 boom. If it was environmental, most likely it was a windless spring with steady warming water temperatures.

That was probably more than what you wanted, but hopefully it sheds a little light into year class strength and temperatures, some of which relating to crappies.

[glow_away]

That was probably more than what you wanted, but hopefully it sheds a little light into year class strength and temperatures, some of which relating to crappies.

Thank you da_chise31! That was exactly what I was looking for!

Applause!!!!

[itchmesir]

Bit how can you tell 2005 craps from 2004/2006?

[Scott M]

[Slabasaurus]

Come on Man, you don't see the '04, '05, '06...... stamp on their back right side? LOL

Ha. Only the ones that are really good at sports have the years on their jackets.

From what I saw on wunderground... the spring of 2005 for MN showed the following:

Temps: March started out below avg temps, but ended with above avg temps. April started with above avg temps and ended with avg temps. The Rest of the spring was avg or below avg.

Wind: While there were some wind gusts above 25mph, the official wind readins didn't reach anyghing over 16mph, and the avg for that time period was 8mph. Pretty calm for spring in MN if you ask me.

I remember playing disc golf on the saint peter course on the flood plains of the river... which means it was probably relatively dry the months leading up to, and including that spring.

[goblueM]

Most of the research I can find has been done in southern reservoirs. And a lot of papers mention that crappies have strong year classes about every 3-5 years.

The southern reservoirs are not the most similar to natural northern lakes, but some of the factors probably still apply. The principle driving factor in reservoirs is hydrology, basically the more water stored in a reservoir, the better the spawning success by crappies.

Generally, the only times when higher water levels have been associated with poor year-classes is when there is high turbidity, which basically was a result of wave-action, although a small amount of turbidity is attributed to runoff in these reservoirs.

Here's a study from Iowa - most of you won't be able to access the full paper, just the abstract. It's a reservoir, but at least its from the Midwest.

Iowa Crappie Study

Essentially, what they found was high water = more larval crappies, and high turbidity = poor numbers of larval crappies. The turbidity appears to be a dominant factor, even if there was high water (beneficial), high turbidity over-rode the benefits of the high water and was associated with reduced success of the crappie spawn.

They summarize some literature that suggests crappies abandon their nests at extremely high levels of turbidity (think chocolate milk colored water) and even if nests aren't abandoned, there is reduced success, most likely due to embryo suffocation.

One might conclude from studies like this that in natural lakes where water retention is mostly nullified, that turbidity (and hence wind levels) might be the driving factor affecting crappie reproductive succes.

[fishlips]

Water levels have been trending up in most of the state since before 2005, so a steady to increasing lake level was one of the factors. I think the 2011 year class is going to be very poor for crappies in most of the northern part of the state. Considering the pounding that they take year around, it could be a problem. The water temps were very slow to come up in 2011 and we had a lot of cool days & nights. I caught numerous crappies in late June with eggs (I released them so couldn't confirm the eggs, but it looked pretty obvious).

[goblueM]

my point about water level was that in natural lakes, rarely do rising water levels actually significantly increase lake coverage, whereas in reservoirs they can drastically alter the surface area of the lake