01-03-2013, 04:34 AM
Fish & Game did pull some crappie out of CJ Strike to stock Lake Lowell for a couple of years. Idaho does not have a lot of large lakes, and most reservoirs eventually connect to the Snake or Columbia. So there's a huge number of hoops to jump through to introduce them to waters where they aren't already present. They're also difficult to manage for size in small waters. You end up with tons of stunted fish not worth catching.
Crappie and perch have a cyclical population. The females produce massive amounts of eggs. From what I've read in books and biology reports, the most important factor in the population is how many of the young survive their first and second year.
Both species are cannibalistic and will eat their own young. When there is a year class where lots of them survive to the size where they are relatively safe from fish predators, they depress the year class for the next few years because the adults eat most of the smaller fish. There was a huge year class in 2006, which you can read about here:
http://www.anglerguide.com/outdoors/news...fm?id=1642
The average life span of a crappie is around 6-7 years, so the leftover 2006 fish are starting to die of old age and Strike is on the downswing side of the population boom. There will probably be a few more years where the number of fish are smaller, but the average size is bigger because there is more food available for fewer fish.
I don't think there's much to worry about as far as people taking too many undersized crappie or perch. It's just part of their population cycle.
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Crappie and perch have a cyclical population. The females produce massive amounts of eggs. From what I've read in books and biology reports, the most important factor in the population is how many of the young survive their first and second year.
Both species are cannibalistic and will eat their own young. When there is a year class where lots of them survive to the size where they are relatively safe from fish predators, they depress the year class for the next few years because the adults eat most of the smaller fish. There was a huge year class in 2006, which you can read about here:
http://www.anglerguide.com/outdoors/news...fm?id=1642
The average life span of a crappie is around 6-7 years, so the leftover 2006 fish are starting to die of old age and Strike is on the downswing side of the population boom. There will probably be a few more years where the number of fish are smaller, but the average size is bigger because there is more food available for fewer fish.
I don't think there's much to worry about as far as people taking too many undersized crappie or perch. It's just part of their population cycle.
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