Sixty Year Diary Clearly Show Crappies Populations Cycle In Size and Abundance

Age 14 fished some of the best crappie lakes of Western Minnesota with my parents, with my drivers driver’s license continued to do so with friends. In those early years winter fishing pressures on crappie was very high hundreds of fish houses every winter. I also fished a couple of private lakes with no pressure. My 60 sixty-year diary showed crappie size and abundance went from small crappie very abundant to scarcer larger crappie during a 7-8 year span. This occurred like clockwork even the private lakes reacted the same fashion with little or no fishing pressure. Anglers on the public lakes would fish a hot lake or two then as the crappie catches got scarce move on. Crappie are a very prolific species of fish for that reason bounce back in time, realizing data showed this on a number of Western Minnesota crappie lakes. Red Lake, many will recall years ago a very abundant crappie population, catchable in size and qty. Those crappies became fewer every year some thought never to come back. Today dating back 3-4 years ago crappie are showing in angler catches today fairly abundant and of good size. I predict like my diary shows will cycle and disappear for time and “cycle” back. So brings me to this question does lowering the limit to 5 crappie really make a difference? Seems to me more about natural crappie lakes and where they are on the cycle.

It seems this is also the case with perch, and imo walleye as well. Made me wonder are there species besides sunfish that end up stunted in size?

Crappies can be stunted. You see it a lot on the chisago area lakes where the crappies are stunted. Some of it was because of slot regs (on Green Lake in particular) but the amount of 7-8” crappies in those systems is alarming. There are some larger but generally not. Anything over goes in a bucket but people continue to fish those lakes hard because the numbers are there.

Gary Korsgaden wrote:

Age 14 fished some of the best crappie lakes of Western Minnesota with my parents, with my drivers driver’s license continued to do so with friends. In those early years winter fishing pressures on <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>crappie was very high hundreds of fish houses every winter. I also fished a couple of private lakes with no pressure. My 60 sixty-year diary showed <em class=”ido-tag-em”>crappie size and abundance went from small crappie very abundant to scarcer larger crappie during a 7-8 year span. This occurred like clockwork even the private lakes reacted the same fashion with little or no fishing pressure. Anglers on the public lakes would fish a hot lake or two then as the crappie catches got scarce move on. Crappie are a very prolific species of fish for that reason bounce back in time, realizing data showed this on a number of Western Minnesota crappie lakes. Red Lake, many will recall years ago a very abundant crappie population, catchable in size and qty. Those crappies became fewer every year some thought never to come back. Today dating back 3-4 years ago crappie are showing in angler catches today fairly abundant and of good size. I predict like my diary shows will cycle and disappear for time and “cycle” back. So brings me to this question does lowering the limit to 5 crappie really make a difference? Seems to me more about natural crappie lakes and where they are on the cycle.

Great post. This reminds me to try a crappie lake that was great 7 years ago and has been dead ever since. Does your diary show patterns in location and depth? Particularly ice fishing during the winter.

Reply from Jimmy Jones on “Double Topic” post that I just deleted.
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Jimmy Jones
Posts: 3012
January 24, 2025 at 9:58 am#2312696

Crappies no doubt go thru natural “hi’s” and “lo’s” and for the most part seem to come back, but there are other factors that can come into play.
Crappies are pretty resilient and can bounce back after adversity hits them. I’ve seen a couple kills on a local lake that took age/size specific crappies. Both times fish in the five to 7″ range were killed off. The kills were only a one summer thing each time and several years apart. The gills would load up with a disgusting looking fungus and smother the fish. Its been several years since I have seen it, and I hope it’s gone for good.

With an absence of a year class that could either feed heavy on bugs or heavy on smaller minnows, both the lesser fish and the larger fish benefited from the lack of food competition from that age class/size, but there was a notable absence of that year class down the road. Still, the other year classes filled that void nicely.

On the other hand, I have seen what was a large-crappie presence in a large retention pond get stripped in a month of a single winter of ice fishing and to this day many years later not have a decent crappie in it.

I think the genetic backbone of any crappie population will stay healthy only as long as those larger fish do not get depleted.

I see a ton of stunted pike up north. Seems like almost every lake up here has an unhealthy number of small pike.

I have seen many lakes with stunted sunfish, bass too.

Cedar Lake in Faribault is notorious for stunted crappies. Been that way for as long as I can remember.

I do agree with the crappie cycle, though. I fish a relatively unpressured lake that seems to go through a similar cycle on a 7-8 year basis.

..

Funny you should post this now…. the winter before I moved to Maui, July 2018… I hammered the crappie on a favorite lake of mine in Central Mn. Since then, talking to people who still fished it, the bite & size hasn’t been as good. I attributed this to my awesomeness in catching crappies… but this year, people are telling me, the bite is back on !!! Literally 7 years later !!! I think your on to something !!!

brandmoney wrote:

I see a ton of stunted pike up north. Seems like almost every lake up here has an unhealthy number of small pike.

There’s a reason the daily bag limit of pike is 10 in most of the state. There are way too many stunted populations of them in a lot of lakes. Unfortunately, it seems most anglers really have no interest in harvesting small pike. Everyone wants walleyes or panfish.

Harvest of big pike has contributed to this problem. In many smaller lakes, the top predators are sizable northern pike (absent of muskies). Big pike eat small pike. Without that balance, there is nothing keeping snot rockets in check. Then you have the DNR trying to stock walleye fry or fingerlings and they all get gobbled right up by the over population of northern pike.

I bass fish a lot and many of the smaller lakes where I target largemouth, this problem is so obvious. Not uncommon to catch 20, maybe 30 of them in just a few hours mixed right in with the bass. This isn’t a new problem either, been going on for at least a decade now. Doesn’t really seem to be getting any better either.

gim wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>brandmoney wrote:</div>
I see a ton of stunted <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>pike up north. Seems like almost every lake up here has an unhealthy number of small pike.

There’s a reason the daily bag limit of <em class=”ido-tag-em”>pike is 10 in most of the state. There are way too many stunted populations of them in a lot of lakes. Unfortunately, it seems most anglers really have no interest in harvesting small pike. Everyone wants walleyes or panfish.

Harvest of big pike has contributed to this problem. In many smaller lakes, the top predators are sizable northern pike (absent of muskies). Big <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>pike eat small pike. Without that balance, there is nothing keeping snot rockets in check. Then you have the DNR trying to stock <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>walleye fry or fingerlings and they all get gobbled right up by the over population of northern pike.

I <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>bass fish a lot and many of the smaller lakes where I target largemouth, this problem is so obvious. Not uncommon to catch 20, maybe 30 of them in just a few hours mixed right in with the bass. This isn’t a new problem either, been going on for at least a decade now. Doesn’t really seem to be getting any better either.

Gim, after years of you always bringing this up and complaining about the pike, maybe this is the year that you will keep some?

blank wrote:

Gim, after years of you always bringing this up and complaining about the pike, maybe this is the year that you will keep some?

I do keep some. I pickle them. But I’m only one person. Tough for me to make a dent.

I’m not very proficient at removing the y bones though. This is why pickling is the go-to route with them.

nuttin wrong with frying them up and then picking the Y-bones out…..been doing it for years!!!!!!! people are just friggin lazy!!!

nuttin wrong with a smoked pike either!!!! i do my part with them snot rockets!!!

There’s a small lake near where I grew up in WI that has a decent crappie population, but it definitely ebbs and flows for both population and size structure. Water quality can get pretty shaky with the ag runoff but some efforts have been made to clean it up a bit.

It’s probably been 10 years now – but we had a few days where we went back with an old jon boat for the nostalgic effect with a hometown buddy to just reminisce, sip beer, and bobber fish for whatever was around while we caught up with eachother. We had 0 expectations but ended up cathing what had to be ~50 12-13″ fish including my PB at 15.5″ (as someone who rarely ever targets crappies). I haven’t fished it since but he stops there a couple times each Winter. Right after Christmas he sent me a picture and said “They’re Back!” and before I looked I knew exactly what he was talking about. His boy was holding a 14-15″ er and said the action was steady all day.

Long story short, I definitely agree that crappies cycle. I think they’re also one of the easiest fish to locate and catch ice fishing which creates a harvest multiplier for the boom and bust cycles on bodies of water. The systems that are full of stunted fish don’t really experience the booms and busts. If I was solely looking for a trophy crappie, I’d be looking for lakes that have crappies but not at record rates in the netting surveys.