smaller fish

I'm not a conspiracy/theory guy. Maybe I'm just in a rut, but it seems to me in the last year or so-I been catching alot more smaller crappie. Anyone experiencing this?
I had a hunch, but after this spring and still not getting the big females I used to. I really believe that we have gotten a tremendous spike of crappie being caught and kept. I have noticed since covid that there have been alot more people on the water since last spring, maybe crappie fishing just got more popular???
Several different lakes -same results. I'll catch a ton of 9" - 9 3/4" fish, but few bigger....

I have never been one to just go out and bring home a limit, but I have been catching better quality fish lately than ever before.

Lakes are cyclic in nature and go through waves of year class fish. We have had full or high lakes here in DFW for the last several springs. Each year, these year classes of fish is strong and thus will mean more small fish than usual because of the abundant cover in the water which allow for a higher survival rate once the crappie hatch. I would say I have caught about the same if not slightly bigger fish but I have been going all over the place. I don't think personally that we have had more crappie taken out. I haven't seen a big spike is crappie fisherman where I have been and even if I did it doesn't mean they are catching. This is just my observation and nothing more.

When Covid hit I saw alot more people on the lake but I did not see them catching lots of fish. LIke stated most lakes go thru cycles. I can remember one year Lavon being over 10ft high during the spring. The crappie had so many new hiding spots that you could not buy a bite. Three years later the fishing was outstanding. The same happens to white bass on most lakes.

Lakes around DFW were high last year and the fish had a really good spawn. I have not been catching small fish at all this year, actually I have only had 3 short fish all year and caught around 300 the last two months but I have not fished deeper than 3 feet all year long. I have been fishing the spawn in 1-3 feet the last two month on two different lakes and six has been great with several fish around 2lbs.

if your fishing deeper stumps and brush piles the big fish should get better after the spawn is over, for the most part a lot of the fish stacked on deeper piles right now are smaller immature fish.

caught my limit in 1-2 feet again this morning with several females caught.

I found out in the last few weeks that a weather pattern affected the number of smaller vs larger crappie caught. Pre-front the fishing turned on and a larger amount of larger fish was caught. Yesterday was the continuation of a cold front with nighttime temperatures in the 30's, bluebird skies and calm water. We caught 95 fish - mostly small crappie with only a few 9-11". Even the bass and sunfish were small.

Note: in this lake, the bottom weeds are 3' from the surface, even in 8' of water, so larger fish easily dive down into cover leaving the larger fish to have fun. The weeds die off by late May to the bottom and normalcy returns as far as size goes.
Note: water temperature has been in the upper 50's - too cold for spawning but the usual temperature to start toward bed locations. On another lake that had little vegetation height (maximum seasonal growth is in late May), I was lucky to catch a dozen fish in total in 4 hours. Water temperature was 57 degrees.

So there's still hope for the lake you're fishing. Try to fish prefrontal which tends to bring larger crappie out to play.

Great comments! It’s not stopping me from going out-I’ll take it over work every time! Lol
The thing that alarmed me was 95% of those fish caught were in the 9” slot. Not much variety in size- that didn’t seem normal. I never really thought too much about lake cycles.

Suggestion: try larger lures for larger fish.
This sunny hit this 3" plastic worm:


Another hit this fat body grub:


and this craw claw:


Four types of fish hit those same lures on the same trip - including crappie. The larger crappie ranged in size from 10-12".

Just think about how may big crappie there will be in the next 1, 2, 3 years. Yessssss! ! !

As fast as crappie grow, as many as there are, and as few fisherman are actually successful at catching them, I don’t think fishing pressure has any effect on the size of fish people are catching.

Kind of agree. Of all the local waters I routinely fish, most are used by kayakers - a huge new fad for some reason. My only problem catching fish of any size is THEM!