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I start from the top. I aquired a piece of land with a 1/4 acre pond, aprox 10 years ago.. It was already stocked with big channel cats ( 4-8 pounds), a stunted bass population ( average size was 5-8 inches), and 7 grass carp.
I started out catching the little bass out until they were hard to catch, I did however catch 2 6 pound LMB and 3 1#-2# bass ( must have been males). I then caught 150 6-8 inch hybrid bluegills and stocked them in my pond. I sat back and the bass started to grow, at a snails pace.
Then the mistake of a lifetime came, I thought it would be cool to have crappies in my pond ( white crappies), I threw 50 8 inch crappies in, and before I knew it those guys were 13 inchers. It wasn't until 2 yrs ago that I caught a small crappie, now they are everywhere, with no end in sight. I wish I would have found this web-site sooner!
My average bass size is 12 inches, but I have atleast 5 in the pond over 4 pounds, and I have caught some in the 4-5 inch lengths, so they have spawned recently.
Last year I caught out over 600 crappies. This year I am still catching them, but the size is getting bigger, and the bass are harder to catch.
I want more baitfish in the pond, I have sunk two stacks of pallets and am planning on introducing fatheads, I have the hybrids in, but I am planning on introducing native bluegills sometime this spring. For a 1/4 acre pond that has predators present how big should the native bluegills be and how many should I buy? Also, If I added 1 7inch northern pike to the pond, would that help put a dent in the crappie population, as a quick fix, or would that one pike eat all of my gills first?

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Is your goal a nice bass pond or a smorgasbord? I don't mean that as any kind of insult - Norm Kopecky manages more species of fish than I used to know existed, and does a dandy job. So a smorgasbord is do-able if that's what you want.

Well.. (scratching my head) ..I think 6" BG would be large enough to survive OK in breeding numbers - it seems to me they would only have to be big enough to avoid predation by the average 12" bass.

As for the Northern - I think your situation is complex enough already without adding another variable, especially one that (if it lives) could get big enough to eat most of your bass.

I've read enough posts here to believe you can manage your way out of (or into) almost any situation. But if you're not looking for a complicated multi-species pond, with it only 1/4 acre, have you considered renovating?

Let's see what wiser and more experienced minds have to say...


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p7672 - The pike will probably eat as many or more bass than crappie due to prey shape and ease of swallowing. You need all the bass your pond can sustain to keep the crappie somewhat controlled. LMB 12" to 18" will be much better crappie controllers than a pike.

Pray for a poor crappie hatch in 2005 which may be possible. Then this will allow you to continue to decrease the recent strong year class of crappie. If you can remove another 400-600 small crappie in 2005 you may start to get ahead of them. Isn't managaing crappie fun?


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poncho7672, I do indeed manage multiple species but remember that we have 4-acres. I have a friend that has a 0.2-acre lake with multiple species. Like me, his fish are almost all larger predators and there is absolutely NO natural reproduction.

Since I give him all of his fish, I know that there aren't more than 100 fish in the entire lake. He feeds them and aerates so his lake can support this amount of fish. He does get fish to spawn but the babies are eaten very quickly. It seems to me that this is the key to his success.

The numbers of fish that you are talking about seem to be way too many to me. Except for maybe catfish, I think your lake is too small to be a food factory unless you manage it in an aquaculture type of manner.


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So leaving it the way it is should be the route I take? I was going to put the native gills in to help out the food chain for the bass to get bigger... I guess that is what I am after, big bass, sorry, should have stated that earlier.. Thanks for the replies!

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If you want big LMB in a quarter acre, you're going to have to get the crappy under control. They have too much overlap with LMB on food preference which makes them a competitor.

The rule of thumb seems to be (based on a lot of corrective action threads here), if you have a problem species in your pond, eliminate it or get it under control before you introduce a desirable species. I think you want the predators to concentrate on eating the problem, not your desired long term forage.

If Norm thinks you've got too many fish, that carries a lot of weight with me. Wait on the BG until the crappy are under control - if I were you, I would add more LMB if I added anything, knowing that this would make my bass population leaner and meaner (in the short term only, hopefully). But the presence of hungry midrange LMB (12") as well as larger breeders probably makes this unnecessary, so I think I'd save my money and concentrate my fishing time on pulling out crappy.


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Poncho7672, here's my friend's experience, Maybe this will give you some ideas. He uses his lake for handicapped and elderly fishing in groups. That means that he needs fish that will bite readily. Everything is catch and release.

Two years ago, he lost all of his fish to winter kill. He had LMB up to 22" in a lake that is about the size of a swimming pool. Here's how he did it.

The only species he had in his lake was LMB. He's retired and has the time to take care of this lake full-time. He also has a lake about a mile away were he can literally trap 5 gallons of fathead minnows a day. Again, he had less than 100 fish in this lake. He fed them as many minnows as they wanted. When he had a group out, he stopped feeding minnows for about a week before. He then used minnows for bait. Again, NO natural reproduction.

If you want big LMB, you might consider doing what he did. My experience is that some LMB will learn to eat pellets. You might try feeding pellets and aerating your lake. Pure BG for forage will probably work better than HBG. What on earth do the 7 grass carp eat?

Rather than just LMB, my friend and I now have a large diversity of fish in our lakes. We really have very simple systems. The predators are large panfish sized with few or no large fish. He feeds his fish fathead minnows and I use BG for forage. Neither of us depend on natural reproduction to replace predators.


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thanks to everyone! This site is great! I went out today with 4 doz crappie minnows and caught several 8 inch egg laden crappies, they are soaking in salt water as I type! I feel pretty good about things, I caught 5 bass ranging from 1#-3#'s, and I caught no tiny crappies. What I did last year by throwing out a bunch seems to have worked a bit. I will keep catching the crappies out as much as possible.
Good question on what the 7 grass carp eat, I posted earlier that I inherited those carp when I bought the place, all of them are over 36 inches long! I have them trained on pellets and I am always trying to shoot them to get them out, I used to have 10 in there when I first started. They get wise to the scene real quick when you start shooting at them.
Thanks again for all of your help! I will wait and see what happens to the food chain after I get the crappies under control. I think I am closer than I have ever been, judging by the growth of my LMB!

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Ponch7672,
I recently dug a pond (3/4 - 1 acre). Ironically, my goal is just the opposite of your specific situation. I really want to stock crappie (black) in my pond along with bluegill, and LMB. How deep is your pond? I have heard many times of how crappie can over populate ponds and their offspring get really stunted. What specific did you do (feed?) to aid them to get 13"? Did you provide any type of habitat for your fish?

Dex


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