If you’re fishing in 30 plus feet, most of the winter they’ll be suspended and I wouldn’t think they’ll be goners when you get them up. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’ve released a million <strong class=”ido-tag-strong”>crappies that way and they seemed fine?
They seem fine when you initially release them but many die from exhaustion soon after. I have seen it first hand fishing over a basin with no snow seeing dead crappies under the ice that I just released. Any crappie taken deeper than 30 ft has a very hard time getting back down.