I see crawfish recommend for forage and plant control. We have crawfish locally but my ponds certainly aren't loaded with them. What do they need to be successful enough to feed the fish and cut down on aquatic plants? Just stocking a bunch isn't enough is it?

You'll need the correct habitat for the craws to call home, especially if stocking them in a BOW with predators capable of eating them. Typically craw habitat is piles of broken slabs of concrete, large rip-rap, boulders, etc.

That's probably why they are around but never take off... no cover. The bottom is mud/silt. I had a chance to build a rock point when we dug our basement but they misunderstood and lined the shore instead of going out into the lake with it.
Thanks for the reply.

I put brick piles in my ponds for craw cover. Stacked like pyramids. Also some stacked boulders in 3 to 4 feet of water.

I have found that CC will tend to rearrange brick piles once they reach about two pounds, probably foraging for craws. Low water event last fall verified it.

I built a rock pier (placed by hand) before adding 100 papershell crayfish. Have not really checked for the crayfish, but there is now a 6-7' halo of missing submerged plants around the pier.

^^^ great pier! That is what I wanted with our rock but it didn't turn out that way. Lot of work to do it by hand!

I originally hoped to float the rocks out, but ended up carrying each one out. It was a lot of work, but worth it for me. It will actually be submerged a couple of inches when I finish bringing up the water level next year. I bought it up 7" last year (this picture before that) and will bring it up an additional 5" next year. I had good luck on my first pond by starting 12" low and gradually raising the water level over a few years. This seemed to help establishing emergent plants and bald cypress.

That's a lot of rocks to carry! How deep is the water there? Were the rocks on site or did you have to bring them in? We've made a lot of corner posts out of rocks but that's dual purpose; make a corner post without having to dig in rock, and help clear a field.

Had 13+ tons of large rip rap brought in and dumped. I hand loaded into my tractor loader and then placed from the loader parked on the shore. Water went to about 3' deep at the far end. It took me a few sessions to place it all.

Lol, sounds exactly like how we do fence... drive the tractor around the field picking up rocks and then park the loader close to the fence to place by hand.

Your post reminded me of an old song: "You load sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt,". Kind of fitting for this pond habit of ours.

My dad used to sing that song to us when we were kids. He was one tough dude back in the day.