,
Mississippi is a long way from Texas, but big news recently surfaced in a local newspaper there that is sure to pique interest among crappie buffs across the Lone Star state and beyond. The story centers on the use of forward facing sonar.
On June 21, Clarion Ledger outdoors writer Brian Broom reported that Mississippi’s Commission on Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks voted to cut daily limits at four of the state’s more popular crappie lakes — Grenada, Enid, Sardis and Arkabutla Lake. All are well known for producing big crappie.
According to the story, the main reasons for the reduction hinge heavily on the growing popularity of forward facing sonar (FFS), and budding concerns among state fisheries biologists and anglers alike that the technology has made catching crappie so easy they believe it could damage the fisheries without measures to help curtail the harvest of large fish.
Daily crappie limits on the aforementioned lakes were slashed from 15 crappie to 10 over 12 inches per angler per day, and no more than 25 crappie per boat, per day, according to the newspaper report. The new limit goes into effect July 24.
Keith Meals, a regional fisheries biologist with the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, told the newspaper the changes were implemented following a three-year study that showed forward-facing sonar usage among anglers on three of the lakes — Sardis, Enid and Grenada — jumped significantly over the course of the study period.
“In that three-year period we saw our fishermen using live sonar increase from 20 percent to 70 percent and it’s probably higher than that, now,” Meals told the paper.
The biologist added that the study results showed that anglers who were using FFS were catching 2-3 times more fish than non-users, and that the main goal behind the more restrictive limit is to try to maintain a quality fishery in size, the newspaper reported.