I am in complete agreement with your friend. Crappie need a very large body of water to maintain a healthy population of good sized fish. When well-meaning fishermen move Crappie to their local small pond to offer more opportunities to catch panfish, they stand a very good chance of ruining the fishery. Crappie are very prolific and their preferred diet of small fish coupled with the size and shape of their mouths limit them to eating small bass and bream. Since most small ponds do not have a large shiner population, that means the bass, bream and other crappie are the targeted food source. I would say that 99% of my fishing is catch and release. The one exception to that rule is that whenever I catch crappie in a small pond, I try to find someone who's keeping fish to give them to. There are several small lakes I fish that are frequented by what I call "bucket sitters". These are the guys sitting on or next to a 5 gallon bucket with four rods cast out as far as they can sling them. When I fish these lakes, I usually pick one of these guys and ask him if he wants any crappie I catch. If the fishing's good, I give him the limit of Crappie and then move to the next guy along the bank. In some ways, I'm trying to control the population of Crappie as much as I am fishing. Crappie + small ponds/lakes = diminishing fishery. Just one man's opinion.

Jim Smith