Last May I bought a 10 acre lake in Missouri about an hour and a half south of Kansas City. I took my time fishing it and developing a fish log over the last year before I made any major management decisions. It has LMB, BG, White and Black Crappie, a few catfish and a few rough fish (carp and gar). All fish I have caught have been fat and healthy. I literally have not caught a skinny fish. I catch between 10-30 bass in an average outing. About 80% of the bass caught are under 13 inches in an average outing. I have caught bass up to 8 pounds and my best day I caught 5 fish over 5 pounds and two 7 or 8 pounders. I have a wide range of class years, just many smaller 13 and under bass. My goal is to have a few more 3-5 pounders and a few less 13 and under fish but otherwise not change much on a healthy fishery. After working with my biologist be said to harvest 300 bass per year under 13 inches and to keep all crappie, catfish and rough fish.
Over the past year I would catch an occasional crappie or big bluegill but have never caught them too consistently. Well this spring I sank some brush and the crappie followed. I'm now catching 20-30 crappie (90% white crappie) in a targeted outing on the brush. Most all of them 70% are over 12 inches with a few over 15 inches. Very nice crappie. It's such a good crappie bite right now with such mature fish that I feel bad pulling out all those old crappie, but I don't want to mess up my fish balance. Do I really need to harvest every crappie? Can I put in a slot or let the 14+ inches go without hurting my plan to grow an average size bigger bass?
Is it possible to have nice percentage of 3-5 pound bass and nice fat crappie at the same time or am I being greedy?
It's a really good fishery now, so I would hate to screw it up so am looking for opinions.
