What's The Deal With Large Sunfish?

[Fish Felon]

Felon, what's your opinion on comparable crappie size to a 10" sunfish?

I used to feel like 10" sunnies were about like 14" crappies, but lately I've found places to catch literally dozen's of 10+ inch sunnies in a trip, whereas I've never caught multiple 14" crappies at a time (other than Red Lake 20 years ago).

Really a 10" sunny is now about as rare as a 12" crappie. So I get your gripe with peoples' obsession with big sunnies - they're actually very common. I can't seem to find big crappies like I can find big sunnies.

BUT I can think of many many lakes where I'm pretty sure I could NOT catch 10" sunfish even if I tried for a few days.

Before I even read the rest of your post 12" is what instantly popped into my head.

The lake the cabin is on that I've fished my whole life on and caught thousands of crappies out of is a good crappie lake....an outstanding one really in many ways. Crappies seem to grow pretty fast and despite adequate to high fishing pressure crappies above 10" are abundant, and of the fat/thick variety. Any crappie that hits 10" maybe 10.5" has "shoulders" to it.

Until a 12.5" I caught this spring 12.25" was the biggest all of us combined had ever caught. 12"s are fairly common....it's not that hard for a couple guys to catch their limits with half over 11" and a few 'footer' slabs mixed in....but they're right at 12." We've maybe caught a dozen to two dozen 12.25" over the decades and until this spring I'd long declared 12.25" is where they maxed out at. Just like we're not ever going to see a 45" pike pulled out, we're not going to see a 14" crappie. Both are possible....neither are going to happen.

Red was an anomaly....in terms of numbers. I think all our big lakes from Pepin to LOTW are capable of producing big crappies, maybe not in numbers but the bigger the water the bigger the fish.

Even lakes in the West metro are more capable of bigger crappies than the East metro. Ottertail and that part of the state produces bigger panfish and fish probably grow faster overall than the rest of the state. A walleye fry in a fertile wetland grows almost twice as fast as a walleye fry in the boundary waters....just ask the DNR....this sort of stuff has, and never should, be rocket science.

My vote is on leaving things as is and trying to change the culture of anglers. Changing limits and creating different zones for different types of lakes that produce bigger or smaller panfish isn't that effective.

Look at the pike regs. At first I thought they were great until I realized their inherent problem....

....anglers didn't want to keep a limit of little pike when the limit was three, and they sure as shit don't want to keep a limit of little pike with the limit being ten.

Until you change angler's attitudes and fishing culture new regs aren't worth a hill of beans.

[Nershi]

FF I agree with a lot of your points but comparing deer to fish is apples to oranges. I’m not going to even start to get in to all the reasons why.

My vote is on leaving things as is and trying to change the culture of anglers. Changing limits and creating different zones for different types of lakes that produce bigger or smaller panfish isn't that effective.

The lakes with special limits and size restrictions definitely prove this statement to be false. Those lakes started showing very promising results in panfish within the first few years.

On one hand I hate to make our regs more complicated because lord knows MN has way too many as it is. On the other hand I don’t think culture is going to change when it comes to panfish. People who fish a lot have it figured out but by and large a 9+ inch gill or 12+ crappie gets kept. A lot of it is ignorance and some of it is lack of respect for ‘little’ fish.

If we want to avoid special slots a good first step would be cutting panfish limits in half. If they leave this up to public input things will stay status quo.

Where are these surveys the dnr is always referencing? Are they like the duck hunters survey that get send to a small portion of the population?

[Quack]

How about all the rods who fish a lot - especially those Dbag Grand Rapids guides pushing this stuff- stop keeping all fish and let those of us who hardly ever get out, let alone actually bumble into some fish, keep what we want.

Fkn guides. Who has more impact on the fishery (and spreads AIS) than guides? They have gall telling us amateurs what to keep, that’s about all.


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[randywatson]

interesting arguments.

on our lake in siren wi we catch a lot of crappie 10-11'' our sunfish rarely push 8.5". this spring my buddy and i got into some prespawn females and every single one was 11-11.5" and the biggest one was 13.25" my biggest ever. we caught well over 150 and 27 were released in grease. (was this the right thing to do?) heck yes~! dudes need to eat.

winter crappie fishing we caught alot of 10-11" female 75% to male 25%.

now the summer bite is back on and we are catching a lot of 9-10" crappie with a few PUSHING 11" i'd say the majority of these fish are females 75% when we kept 9 of them last week for a meal.


we have a person from the dnr doing a creel survey and i talk to her weekly to see what everyone is keeping. she said that people are keeping A LOT of sunfish. She even seemed concerned that they may be getting fished out. I reassured her that our lake will never be fished out for sunnys.

[emptymag]

[quote="randywatson”]we have a person from the dnr doing a creel survey and i talk to her weekly to see what everyone is keeping. she said that people are keeping A LOT of sunfish. She even seemed concerned that they may be getting fished out. I reassured her that our lake will never be fished out for sunnys.[/quote]

I would agree that it probably won’t be fished out. It could be fished so hard it takes many, many years for it to come back.

Kinda like the guys who shoot all the deer when their zone goes to a intensive harvest zone. Their generally the first ones bitchin the next year or two that there are no deer.

Everything in moderation.

I’ve never understood why the panfish limits are so high and I don’t even fish much.

[maplelakeduckslayer]

Felon, what's your opinion on comparable crappie size to a 10" sunfish?

I used to feel like 10" sunnies were about like 14" crappies, but lately I've found places to catch literally dozen's of 10+ inch sunnies in a trip, whereas I've never caught multiple 14" crappies at a time (other than Red Lake 20 years ago).

Really a 10" sunny is now about as rare as a 12" crappie. So I get your gripe with peoples' obsession with big sunnies - they're actually very common. I can't seem to find big crappies like I can find big sunnies.

BUT I can think of many many lakes where I'm pretty sure I could NOT catch 10" sunfish even if I tried for a few days.

Before I even read the rest of your post 12" is what instantly popped into my head.

The lake the cabin is on that I've fished my whole life on and caught thousands of crappies out of is a good crappie lake....an outstanding one really in many ways. Crappies seem to grow pretty fast and despite adequate to high fishing pressure crappies above 10" are abundant, and of the fat/thick variety. Any crappie that hits 10" maybe 10.5" has "shoulders" to it.

Until a 12.5" I caught this spring 12.25" was the biggest all of us combined had ever caught. 12"s are fairly common....it's not that hard for a couple guys to catch their limits with half over 11" and a few 'footer' slabs mixed in....but they're right at 12." We've maybe caught a dozen to two dozen 12.25" over the decades and until this spring I'd long declared 12.25" is where they maxed out at. Just like we're not ever going to see a 45" pike pulled out, we're not going to see a 14" crappie. Both are possible....neither are going to happen.

Red was an anomaly....in terms of numbers. I think all our big lakes from Pepin to LOTW are capable of producing big crappies, maybe not in numbers but the bigger the water the bigger the fish.

Even lakes in the West metro are more capable of bigger crappies than the East metro. Ottertail and that part of the state produces bigger panfish and fish probably grow faster overall than the rest of the state. A walleye fry in a fertile wetland grows almost twice as fast as a walleye fry in the boundary waters....just ask the DNR....this sort of stuff has, and never should, be rocket science.

My vote is on leaving things as is and trying to change the culture of anglers. Changing limits and creating different zones for different types of lakes that produce bigger or smaller panfish isn't that effective.

Look at the pike regs. At first I thought they were great until I realized their inherent problem....

....anglers didn't want to keep a limit of little pike when the limit was three, and they sure as shit don't want to keep a limit of little pike with the limit being ten.

Until you change angler's attitudes and fishing culture new regs aren't worth a hill of beans.

"Keep" is not the same as "keeping, cleaning and eating"

Im thrilled we can load up the pontoon at the cabin and "keep" 60-70 hammer handles