Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Craws

Wondering how my SMB are going to get these dudes under control.. wish I could have gotten a better pic but there are 7 craws in this pic..
When I pull up to water on 4 wheeler to feed, some even come up the bank a foot or so to pickup a few pellets?
Too much training??

Pretty neat. I've never seen feed trained crawdads.

That's pretty cool. You must have a billion of those pinchers in there. If they swim away from the table not full its their own fault for sure.

That is a great situation to have if you have smallies, or LMB for that matter!!!

So cool. Did you stock them?

My crawdads took to feed too. It's added entertainment at feeding time. I have even seen a crawdad pinch/push a common water snake out of the way to get to his feeding spot. Not very bright, but he got away with it even though the snake was big enough to eat him.

Crawdads are a funny thing...I set a trap out one night and had almost 100 of them in the trap by morning, but I rarely seem more than a dozen at feeding time. I wonder how many are in my pond.

Since the flood, and now all of the mats of FA are gone, the Craws along with the remaining Tilapia are having a rough go I think.. My Sago pondweed has been consumed as has all of my groups of APW.
I found out the Tilapia will bite anything in the water so I believe I need to start removing some. I see many of the smaller (less than 5") sizes turning their body flat and sliding up into near zero water to grasp at the very narrow film of FA growing where water meets shore.
Interesting to see one extreme to the other..balance will come with time and some help.

Yes, I put a couple of pounds in with FHM last summer.
The density of FHM and GSH seem to be the target for SMB right now. When I was removing mats of FA before flood, when the boat was full I'd head to my spot I was unloading and the bottom of boat would have hundreds of all sizes flopping around. As I strung FA out on bank, the remaining craws would climb out and head downhill. I think the SMB are going to need to consume the over-abundance of FHM before they start working on the smaller craws much-had no idea they would explode like this, but the entire pond (shoreline) is riprap so again, I shouldn't be surprised.

Crays can create turbidity issue and denude pond of vegetation - been there done that multiple times. As long as density of apex predators is sufficient shouldn't become an issue. My experiences were with my trophy lepomis pond...BG/RES couldn't keep up with YOY crays to manage the population effectively and had resulting issues. Perfect balance is where cray population is dense enough to manage any FA, but not so dense that beneficial macrophytes [pondweed] get's hammered and leads to turbidity issues.

SMB are just passing through that 12" mark with a strong hatch pushing 4+". FHM and GSH are so damn thick I don't think they (SMB) are spending much time looking for craws.
Truly, the 1 thing I was most worried about appears to be the 1 thing I don't need to worry about.. Forage. :-))

Really cool project!