Survey: Live imaging sonar no threat to crappie

An Arkansas Game and Fish Commission biologist says that live imaging sonar does not threaten crappie populations.

Live imaging units are known by many names, depending on the manufacturer. Garmin’s LiveScope is the eponymous version. They all provide a real-time picture of a water body’s subsurface in front of the unit. It exhibits exquisitely detailed images of submerged cover and structure, including brush piles, rock piles and submerged bridges. Rick Ellis, a locally well-known angler, has made a hobby of locating sunken automobiles in Central Arkansas waters. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission uses it to locate the bodies of drowning victims.

Anglers love live imaging sonar because it shows fish in real time. On your screen, you can cast to a single fish. A live imaging unit shows your lure or bait, and shows a fish advance on it and strike. Jason Westerberg, one of the best known crappie anglers in Arkansas, said live imaging has taken the fishing out of fishing and turned it into a video game.

It has also alarmed the angling community, which believes that live imaging makes catching crappie so easy that it might be deleterious to crappie populations. Anglers reinforce the perception by posting on social media photos of limits of big crappie they caught with the assistance of live imaging sonar.

Westerberg said that the biggest advantage of live imaging sonar is that it enables an angler to target big crappie exclusively. Anglers worry that this will result in the elimination of older crappie year classes, leaving nothing but small crappie.

Andy Yung, a Game and Fish Commission fisheries biologist and also an avid crappie angler, discredited these concerns on Oct. 20 during the commission’s monthly committee meetings.

“There are a lot of concerns are from crappie anglers because crappie anglers keep their fish, and crappie are very popular,” Yung said. “They rank number two behind largemouth bass.

“Live imaging has become popular partly because of its perceived effectiveness,” Yung continued. “Anglers that use it have learned to back off. If they get too close, fish leave.”

To find out if common perceptions are bear weight, commission biologists interviewed 700 parties fishing for crappie statewide, from Lake Erling to Beaver Lake and all points east and west and in between.

Slightly more than 33% used live imaging, Yung said. Anglers using live imaging caught twice as many fish in one hour than anglers not using live imaging. In an eighthour outing, for example, a live imaging party catches 18 crappie compared to nine crappie for non-live image anglers.

However, both groups of users harvested the same size crappie, about 12 inches long and weighing about 1 pound.

Even though live imagers catch more crappie than nonlive imagers, they don’t harvest more crappie, Yung said.

“Live imaging anglers are more selective about what they keep,” Yung said. “They harvested a lower percentage of what they caught.”

My interpretation of that is that live imagers keep only big crappie. Non-live imagers keep a greater diversity of sizes.

In the entire sample of 700 crappie fishing parties, only 16 limits were recorded, and half of those were caught in Lake Erling, Yung said. Among 700 parties, only 2.5% caught limits, and 40% of those were illegally over the limit, Yung said.

I am not worried about recreational anglers catching more and bigger crappie with live imaging. I am concerned about guided parties keeping multiple limits of crappie per day every day. Compounded over a year’s time, that amount of pressure could, theoretically, damage a lake’s crappie population.

Yung said the survey does not support that theory. Live imaging anglers simply are not harvesting appreciably higher numbers of fish than they did in the pre-live imaging days.

An interesting phenomenon, Yung said, is the public shaming on social media of anglers posting limits of large crappie. They are being pressured to be discreet, and that is good. Photos often generate misperceptions that provoke emotional overreactions.

To the matter at hand, the bottom line is that crappie breed so prolifically that they are immune to recreational fishing pressure.

“Crappie have a high turnover rate,” Yung said. “Their annual mortality rate is 60%. They have boom and bust cycles, but crappie adapt.”

Remember when we thought that the Alabama rig would destroy our bass populations? It didn’t. I’m still not convinced about live imaging, but the data we have so far suggests our fears are misgiven.