As promised, the Missouri Department of Conservation has scheduled public meetings for early May to discuss the ongoing crappie size problem in Wappapello Lake, which, by pretty much every angler's count, only has gotten worse over the last several years.
"I'm working as fast as I can to get this process going," said Missouri Department of Conservation Fisheries Management Biologist Dave Knuth earlier this week.
A big part of the overall process to make changes to the fishing regulations, Knuth noted, is to gather comments and input from those who have the most at stake - the anglers and business owners around the lake who count on good fishing.
Three meetings have been scheduled, including:
* May 4 at the New Hope General Baptist church, 1864 Highway AA, near the Poplar Bluff, Mo., airport.
* May 9 at the Greenville Elementary School gymnasium, 195 Walnut St.
* May 11 at the University Forest classroom, 46 University Forest Drive (about one mile west of Highway T on Highway KK, south of the dam).
Each meeting will run from 6-8 p.m.
During the meetings, fisheries biologists will present the information they've gathered through trapnetting surveys, an ongoing creel survey and other sources to explain what is happening with Wappapello's crappies, and after their presentation, several stations focusing on various aspects of the fishery will be set up for more one-on-one communication.
"We're also going to present a possible fix," Knuth said without further elaboration.
"The current 9-inch regulation is not working, and it has not improved the size structure at all," Knuth said. "You've got to have good growth for a length limit to work," and that isn't happening.
White crappie growth in Wappapello has slowed down dramatically over the last several years, Knuth noted.
"The whites should be 9 inches long at age 3," he said, based on decades of data from the lake. "However, we've been seeing fish only around 7.4 inches.
"That means there's very few (keeping size) fish available to anglers."
Compounding the slow white crappie growth is an "increasing trend in black crappie densities," Knuth said.
Black crappies have traditionally grown slowly in Wappapello's murky water, and rarely reach the 9-inch legal length limit.
"In the last 10 years, only 2 percent of the black crappies we've surveyed have reached 9 inches," Knuth said.
So, essentially, the lake has too many undersized white crappies and increasing numbers of small black crappies, both competing for the same food resources.
"There are just too many fish to feed with the available food resources (primarily shad)," Knuth insisted. "There's more mouths to feed in the lake, which further snowballs the issue."
Something has to be done to rectify the situation, Knuth said, and he hopes his plan will satisfy anglers and turn things around.
"Science points to a regulatory change to improve the fishing," he said.
The process to make that change, Knuth noted, is "in its infancy," and he stressed it will take time.
Once public comments are collected and considered, a formal regulation proposal will be made, which then must be approved by the MDC director and the regulations committee before final approval by the Conservation Commission.
If approved by department officials and the commission, the proposal would go to the Secretary of State's office for further public review before becoming binding law.
"I hope people turn out," Knuth said of the meetings. "We expect good crowds."
In the meantime, if you'd like to discuss the crappie fishing at Wappapello Lake, Knuth invites you to call him at MDC's Southeast Regional Office at 573-290-5730.