Hi Team, have a 1 acre pond with clear water averaging 8 ft deep in Northern Ohio. Initial stocking of 50 cats, 75 LMB, 500 BG and 200 RES. All are doing well with the bass pushing 14 in, cats 17 and panfish 8. Both bass and BG spawned this year. Cats are harvested and replenished in the long run. There are large numbers of shiners and minnows too. I also feed daily.

I’ve been reading with great interest about adding hybrid stripers. Seems to me that they would provide good fishing opportunity, good occasional table fare and wouldn’t interfere badly with my current mix. If I get them I will switch from 32% protein food to 45%.

Here are my questions?

General comments?

How many on initial stocking?

Should I get them this fall or wait til April?

Thanks, Tony

I would check for availability first.

Do your local fish suppliers have any fall HSB for sale?

FishinR is spot on with the availability comment. HSB are difficult to locate in fall. Spring is when HSB are commonly sold in Ohio. Since your pond is established IMO the best size to stock with best survival success is the 6"-8". Many of the fish farms get in the 3"-5" that for me get less % survival when stocked, especially with established fish. I also in OH get poor small HSB survival when stocked too early in spring - late May early June is best times for new HSB - IMO. Best money is spent on the 6"-8" sizes. For 1 ac and your planned goals I would stock 15-20 HSB. If it were my pond prior to stocking HSB I would make 'pond capacity' room for the HSB by removing an equal number of CC or LMB. Ponds quickly fill to fish biomass capacity due to reproduction. Ponds mainly respond to fish poundages not numbers. Currently after 1-2yrs your pond is at carrying capacity and best growth of HSB will be if the pond has open capacity space for the new HSB. Always remember as predator fish grow the total poundage tends to increases that means other fishes have fewer poundages. If you get the HSB in soon after the LMB spawn the HSB may help reduce LMB fingerlings allowing for bigger current bass. Most all ponds have too many small bass that create lack of food. Your young pond with 13"+ LMB will soon see a shortage of small fish especially this spring & summer. Guaranteed!. As time passes be watchful for numbers of small fish that you are seeing.

https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92440#Post92440

HSB? Fast growing when feed, a blast to catch, find a better way to cook them than I ever did if you eat them.

In my pond, at least, the HSB have not kept excess LMB numbers down. I keep telling them to only eat LMB, but they never listen.

Still, I love HSB and am glad to have them. Saved many a fishing trip when bass turned up their moody noses at our offerings, particularly in cool or cold weather.

Just leave them alone when it gets really hot, as they'll fight to the death, even if released alive after a long battle. And while you can safely put your fingers in their mouth, avoid their gill plate, it is razor sharp!

Would stocking stripers decimate what BCP are left?

Due to their mouth gape, probably not.

Esshup
Thanks for the reply. I understand that BCP as fry and juveniles that they live in open water to do their filter feeding and stripers are open water fish also.

When predator and prey frequently interact, it is highly likely the predator is feeding on numerous nearby prey. However I do not know of any published research on this topic of HSB eating a lot of small pelagic stage crappie. Ewest our Pond Boss librarian can search his resources for this or a similar topic. IMO probably the best way to determine this information would be to do gut analyses of open water HSB when crappie are in the pelagic stage of life. This to me sounds like a very good college level research topic for MS or PhD students.

I have now had HSB for at least 5 years. I initially added them to eat LMB fry not my precious Crappies. The LMB are hard on my smaller Crappies. They are very aggressive pellet eaters and grow fast. We have a rock quarry so the water is pretty clear and that has made them more difficult to catch because they have become line shy. I was fishing for CC this fall with live 8 inch chub and caught one that was 30 inches long, body depth of 10 inches and 5 inches thick. He was quite a beast. I was lucky I had on 20 lb. braid. We think they are very good to eat. I cut as much of the red meat off as I can and we bake them in butter and lemon with salt and pepper to taste. It is a white flaky meat. I like that there is no worry of reproduction.

jgr - Have you done any stomach "look see" for the stripers that you harvest? Any proof they eating small bass or crappie?

When fishing with braid or any fishing in clear water, flurocarbon line or a fluro leader will increase catch rates.

Several Fisheries Mgt Cos have had very good success using TFS , Crappie and HSB. Yes HSB eat Crappie. Have also had success with same stocking and SMB as an add on.

https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthre...ies+biologist&Search=true#Post486646
Hybrid Bass to control Black crappie? - Pond Boss Forum

Nice article. If you read it carefully then you will notice all the requirements (necessary items/events) noted by the authors. While correct and possible all the requirements noted sure tell you that doing this successfully over time is like balancing on the edge of a razor blade. This article is a nice way of explaining what many other State Agency Pond Mgt books put more bluntly - crappie are not recommended for small waters.

Newer reports of pond success with crappie exist - just a different approach. See this from a prior 2015 thread.

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92447#Post92447 Crappie archive � a lot there


Very hard to have a good pond/lake (under 40 acres) with crappie (black , white or hybrids) as they all overpopulate in time. There is a method but it does not involve LMB and BG. There are exceptions to everything and some ponds do have crappie that seem to do ok with LMB and BG. Problem is we can't so far tell what it is about those ponds that make them work. Here is the archive link on crappie and an excerpt on the plan that seems to be working.

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92447#Post92447

From one of the linked threads on Crappie. Now several yeas old. BC= black crappie in this post. Jeff now works with Shawn Banks.

Southeastern Pond Management reports in its client newsletter ( see link to newsletter
http://www.sepond.com/images/news/FishTales/sepondfall07.pdf ) excellent success (so far) with Crappie in Southern ponds. This is the same company that one of our PB Convention speakers (Dr. Jeff Slipke) works for. He also provided the PB Forum through Dave Willis info on SMB in Southern ponds. The newsletter contains an article on that as well.

Back to the article on Crappie. With research from reservoirs on HSB feeding they found what we know that the HSB ate a lot of TShad. They also found that HSB eat a lot of young crappie. With that info they decided to try that application on some test ponds. They started with a clean pond and added TShad , GShiners and FH in the fall. The next spring they stocked BC fingerlings followed by HSB in the fall. Over the next 4 years they saw fast growth among the crappie with little crappie recruitment. No sign of the usual problems with crappie in ponds. They then created more ponds like the first and report that electrofishing results are very promising - slab crappie with no overpopulation and - yes the HSB are doing well. A pic of one of the HSB appears to be about 8 lbs. A pic of one of the crappie looks to be about 1.5 to 2 lbs.

Update - additional info on this idea -

North American Journal of Fisheries Management
Fish Community Response to Hybrid Striped Bass Introduction in Small Warmwater Impoundments
J. Wesley Neal*, Richard L. Noble, and James A. Rice


Results from this study suggest hybrid striped bass may have consumed enough small black crappies to prevent overpopulation without eliminating recruitment. However, further study is warranted using a larger number of ponds and differing conditions. If these results can be replicated, enhancing crappie fisheries while simultaneously creating a hybrid striped bass fisheries would be a favorable alternative to complete pond reclamation.

Bill, I have checked stomach contents. Of course found pellets, small bass, small CC but no Crappies. I am not sure how well they have spawned. I add Crappies each year to try and help them out and this spring saw more on beds then any year previously but waiting to catch small ones in the winter through the ice. I catch several in spring and could not ask for them to look better. Very thick for Crappies. I have as yet not kept one but probably should to see what they are eating. I suspect they are helping with somewhat control of LMB. That's a good thing. It's a 10 A. rock quarry 22 to 35 foot deep and when we rented it 10 years ago it was full of stunted LMB. They are much better know.

By the way, I love braid but always use 3 to 4 ft. flurocarbon leaders but I actually think the HSB can see the hook.

Lusk once talked about a 40 acre lake that was over run with stunted crappie ad no bass recruitment. His solution was catfish and Hybrid Stripers. At some point the anglers started targeting the big cats and stripers. After that he went back with8 to 12 inch bass.

Get all the red meat off when you clean them. Soak them in salt water with some lemon juice for 48 to 72 hours in the fridge. Drain them each day with new water and salt. They are great grllled in butter in foil ok baked. But if you want to fry them the trick is place the fillets in ice and water couple of hours before frying them. Take a bottle of tabasco or louisianna hot sauce and pour it in with the ice and fillets. Let that soak at least a couple of hours but not over 12. Bread them and fry them, I have fixed them for hundreds of people and they like them better than catfish or bass. Hot sauce is the key and when fried it is not hot to taste. But it does take that strong fish taste out of them

After you cut out the red meat try soaking them in buttermilk for 12 hrs in the fridge before cooking. See how that compares to the salted water.