05-16-2013, 06:25 PM
Welcome to BFT! Happy to hear from you.
On the crappie: Crappie are cyclic in their populations. When there is a huge number of large crappie in a lake, like Brownlee had, they eat most of the young crappie. So you get a great 3 or 4 years of catching the 2 or 3 upper year classes that dominate the reservoir.
But caught or not those fish pass on, then there is a gap from those year classes that the big boys ate! Plus throw in a few years of water problems, drought, poor spawning conditions, and other preditors such as smallmouth and catfish and you get some not so good years.
It will probably recover, but it will take some good water years.
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On the crappie: Crappie are cyclic in their populations. When there is a huge number of large crappie in a lake, like Brownlee had, they eat most of the young crappie. So you get a great 3 or 4 years of catching the 2 or 3 upper year classes that dominate the reservoir.
But caught or not those fish pass on, then there is a gap from those year classes that the big boys ate! Plus throw in a few years of water problems, drought, poor spawning conditions, and other preditors such as smallmouth and catfish and you get some not so good years.
It will probably recover, but it will take some good water years.
[signature]