WAPPAPELLO, Mo. -- In a shallow lake where the water level tends to fluctuate widely, a little stability goes a long way, and when it comes to Wappapello Lake's crappie fishery, that's exactly what's happened over the last two growing seasons.
"Conditions have been favorable the last two years, and I think the fish look good this year," said Department of Conservation Fisheries Management Biologist Dave Knuth as he measured crappies in the People's Creek area of the lake last week.
Knuth, along with fellow biologist Jason Crites and graduate student Joseph Root, spent several days conducting the annual crappie trapnetting survey on Wappapello, which seeks to determine growth rates, age structure and more.
Twenty nets were set in shallow water along the shoreline from the People's Creek area up to the mouth of Lost Creek and were checked daily.
Catch rates during this year's survey, Knuth said, were good, and with a water temperature of 56 degrees, most fish still were being trapped closer to the channel.
"They're not in the creek arms yet," Knuth said.
The fish are "on a fall feeding pattern" and look very healthy, Knuth noted. "If they're eating in October, I'm happy."
This year's survey showed "quite a few white crappies between 8.5 and 9 inches," Knuth said, plus several larger specimens were trapped as well. About 25 percent of white crappies were at least 9 inches long, which is slightly better than a year ago.
Growth this year, Knuth expects, should be similar to last year, though it remains below the long-term goal.
White crappies in Wappapello, Knuth said, should reach 9 inches long at 3 years of age, but that hasn't been the case for several years. A few factors are thought to contribute to the slow growth, including food availability, increased numbers of black crappies and the restrictive 9-inch minimum length limit currently in place.
Food drives Wappapello's crappie population, and the primary forage is shad. In some years with highly-variable water levels, shad reproduction is reduced and, therefore, there are less of them for crappies to eat. That happened a few years ago, and the crappies were thin and unhealthy looking because of a lack of small shad to eat. In contrast to that, after the flood of 2017, the lake has been much more stable and the shad spawns have been strong, resulting in plenty of forage for the crappies and healthier fish overall.
Black crappies, which grow very slowly in Wappapello's dingy water and rarely reach 9 inches long, have increased tremendously in number over the last decade and now account for about 50 percent of the lake's crappie population. Those smaller black crappies compete with young white crappies for food, reducing the growth potential for the white crappies.
At the same time, the current 9-inch regulation, in effect since 2006, forces anglers to return smaller fish to the water. With half of them, the black crappies, never having the potential to reach legal size, the lake has become filled with small fish.
To help balance the size structure of crappies in Wappapello, MDC is working on a new regulation for the lake.
Knuth has stressed many times a length limit, like the current regulation, doesn't work effectively on a shallow lake with such variable water levels, and his research and creel surveys of anglers show that to be true.
A new proposed regulation, which had strong support from anglers during two recent public meetings on the subject, would still allow 30 fish to be kept daily, but only 15 could be more than 9 inches long. That would take pressure off the larger fish and allow more to stay in the lake for a longer period of time.
The idea, Knuth said, is to let anglers take more of the smaller fish from the lake, reducing competition between the crappies and creating a more balanced age and size structure.
Anglers, he stressed, wouldn't have to keep small fish if they didn't want to, but the opportunity would be there for those who want to keep a limit.
The new regulation, Knuth said, will be an action item on MDC's code review process in January and should be voted on by the Conservation Commission in February.
"If approved," Knuth said, "it will go into effect in March."