There has been so much good information given so far. Black crappie seem to be able to grow on small food items where white crappie cannot. That an animal can grow big on small items is not as strange as it seems. Baleen whales in saltwater and paddlefish and sturgeon in freshwater grow very big on very small prey. While not growing big, gizzard shad can grow a tremendous amount of biomass on very small food. Bruce Condello explained how this happens.
I think the answer to this whole puzzle goes back to what happens in large lakes that does not happen in small lakes. I think the answer has already been given. Crappies are schooling fish. In large lakes they are only reproducing in part of the lake. That means that LMB are successfully reproducing in other parts of the lake. In small lakes, this separation is not occurring. That means the young crappie in a small lake are close enough to the young LMB to eat most or all of them. Remember that Bob Lusk said that crappie reproduce before LMB. Over time, that means a loss of predators to keep crappie populations in check.
In northern lakes, yellow perch and northern pike reproduce before crappie. This might be one reason crappie aren�t as big of a problem in northern lakes as southern lakes without these species.
Before moving forward on how to manage crappie, I�d like some comments about whether my analysis of the situation is accurate so far.
