That's probably why Maryland has a limit, 15 sunfish in aggregate per day, 30 possession per person. There are some lakes where I wish people could keep more where the fish are stunted. Do you know anything about the causes of stunted sunnies and crappie? I know that most people think it's all overpopulation, lack of predators and lack of bait, but do you know any studies about this or other causes? I guess it's all of the above, but I was wondering if it might also be due to things like inbred genetics... Thoughts?
My understanding is
stunting and
mostly small panfish can actually be two different things. So it's important to know the difference. Stunting is typically when the the body of water has reached its carrying capacity and growth slows down considerably leaving a lot of slow growing panfish. You typically see this when the panfish population doesn't have enough different size predator fish to keep the panfish under control from fry up to juveniles. Exasperating the situation is the predator fish such as largemouth bass have a hard time keeping their own numbers up because lot of hungry stunted fish decimate their fry. Adding more predator fish such as largemouth bass rarely fixes the problem as the fecundity of the sunfish is so high (spawn up to 4 X per year), and you would really need different size bass to address each age class. And lots of them.
Once a body of water stunts I'm not sure anglers can make a big difference even with no limit. And no I am not contradicting myself as bodies of water that are in balance or close to balance are different than stunted waters.
On the other hand lots of smaller panfish available with few large ones can be an angler produced problem. I think we all know waters where there are lots of fish available just under the size limit. We are our own worst enemies if we want larger fish available if we keep harvesting those larger panfish. Illinois Natural History has studies showing that removing large bluegills from the beds will reduce the average size of the bluegills, not only from overharvest, but smaller fish that were not spawning yet take their place which reduces their growth rate. When a fish reaches sexual maturity their growth rate slows down.
I do think an infusion of new genes is a good idea in smaller bodies of water like ponds, but think the above causes are the major reasons for issues.
Like a wise friend once said to a lot of questions: "It depends." I think this is a lot more complicated than it appears on the surface.
