Year Class

[Craig Plummer]

Can someone explain certain species Year Class to me. If we have a good year class coming up or a poor one for crappies and how they are predicted.

[fisherman-andy]

A successful year class deals with successful spawning, foraging, Stocking by DNR, weather & geography area etc. Many other variables affecting it.

If you fish a certain lake alot and target a certain species like Crappies you will usually find out that most Crappies will be of similiar size. Let's say you catch alot of 8 inch Crappies and alot of 4 inch Crappies too. That makes up 2 different year classes. It a good prediction that the older Crappies has had successful spawning and that is why your seeing the smaller class size Crappies. From that you can do an educated guess that those plentiful smaller Crappies will mature within a 3yr period given the proper forage & weather conditions. Thus creating a good class of fish.

However there's just too many variables affecting year classes and their ability to be strong. It's possible that poor forage, stunted populations, Summer or Winter kill can take out a strong year class. It depends on the lake or river. Each is different.

[Deitz Dittrich]

Yep what Andy said... For crappies to spawn successfully, its needed to have a string of calm days in a row with the water the right temperature. Every now and then we get that weather and have a boom of a spawn and many fish survive. Then as the years go by, those fish begin to get bigger. I have seen quite a few lakes in the Chisago area that seem to have had a good spawn a few years ago as there are a lot of 5-6" fish coming up. I would call that a good year class.