would it make sense to stock Crappie,then give them a batch of FHM every month? Or is this stupid?

thanks

flymoron

Sounds like an expensive once a month meal.

Not alot of people on this site suggest stocking crappie in residential sized ponds due to prolific reproduction.

Crappie are a big water fish. Unless you have a minimum of 25 to 30 acres, I wouldn't do it.

FM,

The crappie take over a pond in a short time if you don't have a lot of predators to eat them. I am spending my winter attempting to cull some "stunted" crappie out of a 5.1 acre pond. This project is akin to kicking yourself in the butt. If you have crappie they will abide, and feeding them is not a needful thing.

thanks everyone for the sound advice

Actually, you are catching and keeping every crappie and bluegill you catch in order to make room for the walleye and small mouth I added in the fall.

I disagree that the crappie are stunted. The older larger ones are smart enough not to sit under six round lights eating minnows dropping from the lights. All this while their buds are sucked back up through those lights never to be seen again.

Ice fishing is a poor method for sampling a fishery, especially fishing in the same area of the pond over and over again.

"""would it make sense to stock Crappie,then give them a batch of FHM every month? Or is this stupid?""" That sounds easy but what happens when the crappie make thousands of babies? The batch of FHM wont feed all the babies unless the batch of FHM is increased by 10-20 fold.

Could a crappie on crappie pond (crappie only) be something worth trying? Would you likely end up with large crappie eating their young and dominating the pond; preventing stunting?

""Could a crappie on crappie pond (crappie only) be something worth trying? Would you likely end up with large crappie eating their young and dominating the pond; preventing stunting?"". For this topic I've sampled several ponds one with only blk crappie and shiners and the second with blk crappie, YP, and shiners. In both ponds crappie maxed out at around 7"-8". YP fared better in the pond with crappie. IMO Crappie need predators that can eat lots of small crappie up to 4" to maybe 5" long. If most all those up to that 5"-6" size can be thinned enough, there is a better chance the surviors will grow to larger sizes.

Personally, I'd rather catch crappie than bass of catfish. And,
I've read the advice about not stocking crappie in smaller ponds many many times from various sources including this forum, so there must be some credibility to it. However, I do have crappie in one of my ponds, though not by choice - I have no idea how they got in the pond. I can usually catch them in the early spring, but never after that. The crappie are of the black variety with a distinctive black strip running down the back. I've read that they are called Mohawk crappie. The've been around for about 3 years now, but have yet to be much of a problem. Ofcourse, that may change. I'm only able to catch about 20 or so of them each year. The pond is about 4.25 acres and also has bass, cat, and bluegill.

If the bass and catfish were established well before the crappie, they are probably keeping the crappie numbers low. I know of several ponds similar to your situation and you can catch all the crappie you want from spring time well into the fall.