I have a small pond(7 years old) and I am trying to catch some of the crappie and smaller bass to allow the fish to get bigger. I also put in some minnows when the pond was filling up and You could go down there for about 3 years after that and see some swimming around the bank when you was fishing. Now you dont see any and the only thing I see is the small brim(under 2 inches) along with some small bass. I was taking the bass and crappie out cause there are to many in there. There is also cats(hybrid) in there too. Anyway I was wondering if I could put some more minnows and maybe some shinners in there to help out the bass to try to give them a jump and get some size to feed on the crappie. The fish aint starving thats for shure cause everyone you catch is healthy. What about some Knotty heads or some crawfish too? Have yall ever tried them out? Maybe i should put another predator in the pond to help me out on the crappie or some bigger bass? I want to go down there in be able to pull out some slabs and some big bass when I get off of work. Help me out here?????

I would think that the last thing that you would want to do is add another predator. You have two predators already, the bass and the cats. Depending upon the species of cat they can get huge and could become a significant predator.

"Minnows" is such a generic term. There are tons of different types of small fish that people refer to as minnows. Some breed well in ponds and some not as much.

Also keep in mind that the bigger the bass is the larger the meal that it desires. The experts will correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think a 4 or 5 pound bass is going to be eating a lot of minnows. They are going to be looking for larger fish.

This is why the bluegill/LMB is a favorite combination. The BG becomes the feed source (forage base) for the LMB.

Don't get me wrong, adding minnows might help, but you will need to establish a forage bass to get bass to any decent size.

Also keep in mind that a pond can only handle so many large predators. I believe the standard is 50 pounds of predator per acre. That is not a lot. So to get big bass you need to cull out a lot of bass so that a few can grow to a decent size.

I'm no expert so wait for more opinions.

LilRed,

When you say small pond how small are we talking? The chances of you having both LMB and slab Crappie in the same small pond are problably slim to none. Most anyone on this site will tell you that you should have at least a 20 to 25 acre pond to handle Crappie. JHAP had some good advise above but you need to remember that you really have 3 predator fish. Crappie eat minnows too! So you have Crappie, LMB and CC in one small pond! Dude you are going down a road only a few I have heard about on this forum can manage. Not to say you can't but it will take much effort on your part. With that said you can always supplament feed with some shiners for sure, but remember like JHAP said you need to get a good BG population started. Maybe get some more bigger BG to put in the pond so they won't get ate and can have bunches of babies. The one thing I did was I put 10 lbs of Golden Shiners in my pond when I put 50 4 inch CNBG in my pond just to make sure the pressure was off of them and the bass wouldn't mess with them. So as the experts will say you can use minnows as one of your many tools to help in your pond for feeding but remember it's just a temp thing as the bass and will eat those shiners like candy and it won't take long and you will be right back where you started unless you get your BG population up and going and I would get rid of ALL the Crappie but that's just me. And I am like JHAP not an expert but learning as much as I can from them! Good luck and keep us posted as to what you do.