Meadowlark, I should have used the word cyclical. The system I described is a cycle of boom and bust similar to lemmings and snowshoe hares. This is as ewest described.
As ewest said above, there are many environmental factors. However, I wonder if the controlling factor is the amount of predation by the previous large year class. Does anyone have an opinion about this?
Neither I or Jim Mannerud (Dave Willis will have to comment about Jim's lake) have any problem with stunting of crappie. I have both black and white crappie. Both of our lakes are extremely predator heavy.
If crappie can be pellet trained, then we should be able to raise them exactly the same way Bruce Condello does bluegills.
Does anyone have an opinion of what would happen if we had not only LMB, BG and crappie but also HSB? What would happen if we added another predator? It seems like part of the problem is that we don't have constant predation on the crappie. The crappie make the bass population cyclical also. But if we make the predator population steady by constantly adding fish (which we must with HSB), we might control the cyclical nature of the crappie. Just thinking.
