A friend of mine emailed me earlier this week with a story and a photo of himself holding a bass of maybe six pounds. I checked out the lake on Google Maps--looks like it may be four or five acres in size. I've X-ed out a couple of things in the email:

When I would ride my bike down XXXX, I would catch a glimpse of a lake behind this barn. I finally cornered the landowner and asked if I could take my son fishing. He said 'yes,' just do him a favor. . . take out all the 5, 6, 7 lb. bass we catch?!!! Come to find out he actively manages that lake for giant crappie and he really did want me to take out all those giant bass. He puts $3K (400 lbs.) worth of bait fish in there every spring! Anyway, I told him that I would respect his wishes but that I was morally opposed to killing those big fish. But, he really, really wants them out. Oh, the dilemma. The day we caught that fish we caught probably 4 more like that plus about 50 others in less than an hour. No kidding. Talk about shooting fish in a barrel. XXX hooked two others that spit the hook that were bigger than that, and I landed a 22" fish that was spawned out. We never did catch any crappie but when I talked to the landowner later he told me the location of a giant brush pile he sank a few years back where I am sure the crappie are stacked. Get this - he's talking 2-3# crappie that are the STAPLE of his lake...We won't be able to fish it again until late this week or next. One of those dream lakes.

The method is one of a few successful way to grow nice crappie. Note - be prepared to add 100 lbs of minnows/acre ($750) each year.

Fatheads, crappie and bass. I'd add redear to the mix. Would you stock anything else in the lake? And what would be the minimum size for a lake, if you want to try that?

Bill, what do you think about the removal of large bass? I would have guessed that leaving those big ones in would have been advantageous--a six+ pound LMB isn't going to eat many FHMs, and might be pretty effective crappie predator, if one was shooting for trophy crappie. I would have thought one might aggressively cull the smaller bass, which would be less effective crappie predators, and compete for FHM with crappie.

I wondered about that myself.

Also, instead of buying minnows every year, why not dig a customized FHM pond directly upstream from the crappie pond and raise your own crop of minnows every year? Configure it for easy seining or with some sort of gated drain pipe or sluice that lets you easily transfer your minnow crop every fall.

The larger the LMB the larger BCP that they can eat. By having a lot of little LMB in there, he's reducing the amount of small BCP, and anything that can escape predation has a LOT of food to eat. The suviving BCP will grow to a large size quickly, especially with the minnows in there.

If he had the room and the time, I think the forage pond is a great idea.

Makes sense...I guess I was thinking that all those hungry smaller LMB would really hammer the FHM-even more than they would the crappie. And LMB are particularly effective shallow water predators, cruising the zone where the FHM are likely to concentrate.

Don't forget the crappie hammering the you bass and probly anything skinny and up to six inches

Yoy. Spell checker darn it.