I have a 1/2 acre and put 2000 fh, 150 crappie, 200 perch, and 50 red ears. When I harvest my crappie and perch, what kind of size limit size should I have? My perch are about 4"-8" now. And how much should I take out a year?

thanks
Steve

I would keep every single crappie you catch. With a fish community like that, fishing alone will not keep up. I would strongly look into stocking some bass ASAP or using a fish trap to help keep up with fish reproduction.

You will have to keep a close eye on your growth rates and also watch your FHM population to see if they are maintaining their numbers under the perch and crappie predation. If they are, they should help keep your fish fed. I can easily see the FHM being completely eaten out of your pond though. Growth rates will suffer as their isn't much of a workhorse forage fish in your pond without the FHM...

The crappie are only 2"-4" right now. So you think I have to many fish in it?
How many bass should I get? Sorry Im really now to this fish stuff.

I think CSBJ is exactly right about keeping every crappie you catch. You're gonn a have a crappie explosion if you're not careful. GENERALLY, I think stocking would go like this: BG, FHM, RES the first year with NO predator fish. Build something with a flat bottom so your FHM can spawn against the bottom side. Then let your BG, RES have at least one season to spawn. It might be OK, but I'm not a big fan of perch in a small pond if your gonna have other more desirable predator fish included in your population, ie crappie, LMB. You'll have tremendous competition for forage fish, which coincidentially, you will need now with that many crappie.

Some guys have a pond that size and have crappie, but it is generally an crappie exclusive pond.

I think you'll be able to bring your population back into managable ranges, but it will take time and some effort. These guys here will give you the road map. My ideas are just that. Ideas. The experts will be ere to help you. Good luck.

zoeconner, if you read through the info linked to in the Archive Crappie Pond thread, you will get an idea why your Crappie are receiving all the love usually reserved for a redheaded stepchild with bad breath.

NOTE: My apolgies if I have offended any redheads or stepchildren. This is the Internet, so halitosis is your own business.

Thanks. All of my fish I plan on eating. I just want them to bigger. If I put in bass wouldnt they eat everything? I was going to put some in but I was going to wait until next year. Should I put them in now.

You should get them in now so they can eat most of the babies your perch and crappie spawn. The remaining babies will grow bigger and get to a size worth eating... Make sure you stock a fingerling size of bass large enough to avoid being an expensive snack for your crappie or perch! Bass will eat a lot, but that is a good thing as you will have way too many baby perch and crappie if not..

But wouldnt the perch eat the little perch and get bigger by that?

Y perch do eat small perch but they not seem to grow well on a primary diet of perch. It might be due to the spiney fins and smaller mouth size and top end size of the perch.

Just in case you're not convinced yet, zoeconner, everything CJ and the other guys above have told you about crappie, is dead on, and not to be ignored unless you want a pond full of thousands of three-inch-long crappie you can see through. I've never once heard of a fisheries biologist or pond manager ever recommending crappie for a pond; the only people who will recommend them to you are hatchery owners who want your money enough not to care about what happens to your pond.

I have seen firsthand, more than once, lakes much larger than yours, one ten acres and the other thirty, completely overrun by tiny crappie as described above; I'm not exaggerating when I say you could almost see through them. And those lakes had very respectable populations of bass; the larger lake had huge LMB. If you had 200 adult bass in that pond they would not be able to eat all of the crappie. Crappie spawn very early in the year, before LMB, and by the time the LMB young-of-year get big enough to eat fry and fingerlings the crappie are already too big for them to eat, hence the problem.

If you want a successful pond, get some LMB in there ASAP. Otherwise you'll be learning a very unpleasant lesson the hard way. I would even consider adding a few walleye as they tend to be a more aggressive predator than LMB. You could stock 25 4-6" LMB and 25 4-6" walleye, and you'd have a good shot at a pond that would stay balanced. The crappie and perch that live would get much larger than they would in a pond full of overpopulated crappie because they would have plenty to eat.

Lastly, to answer your harvest question, you should strive to keep the total biomass of your pond at or below 150-200 pounds, unless you're fertilizing and feeding a supplemental food in which you could push it another 100 safely without aerating. Generally you should have three-fourths of your total biomass in prey fish, and one-fourth in predators; you have an unusual combination of species to this point, and crappie don't fit well into either category; I'm not experienced with perch being from TN, so you're going to have to observe closely how the population dynamic develops and use that as your guide. If for example you get predators in there and they do a good job of controlling the perch but not the crappie, you'll need to catch out as many crappie as you can to avert disaster; if the predators control the crappie but the perch explode, you'll need to keep a bunch of perch. It's all about keeping the pond within the limits of what it can support in terms of food and oxygen available, water quality, etc.

Crappie and YP can both stunt in a pond without enough food. In addition they both spawn early and will compete for food with each other.