Hi All. New to the site and to pond ownership. Recently bought some acreage with an existing 1 acre pond. It averages 8ft deep. The people I bought it from owned the property for 50 years. This is probably a familiar story. The pond is full of small crappie. Looking for advice, start over or add fish that will balance it out? If I start over what is the best procedure? Drain the pond and make it bigger/deeper, etc? Thanks!
Hi Geoff! Welcome to the forum! Is your pond a groundwater, spring, or earthen dam and run-off source? Each pond water source poses it's own unique needs to drain, sterilize and renovate.
Crappie in a one acre pond are a LOT of work to manage, so you will want to read some old archive posts that catch your eye and get some ideas on what you'll want and get an idea of management time you'll need to invest.
A couple great books as resources to help you learn a lot of terminology and about the aquatic ecosystem would be Bob Lusk's, Perfect Pond, Want One...and Mike Otto's, Just Add Water.
Thanks. It is a run off pond. The bottom of a few hills with a dam on one end.
Geoff, the easiest way to drain a pond like yours if it does not already have a drain valve id to put in a siphon. If wanting to do a complete restoration, simply breach the dam. Once the pond is lowered, you can use Hydrated Lime to sterilize the water.
Thanks! I went out there today and threw the pole in the water. Got a bunch of bites but what I pulled out is the smallest fish I've ever caught. 4" long maybe.
Geoff,
Welcome to Pond Boss...tons of good info and helpful folks here. Post some pics of your project when you get time.
Fished it some more today. I'm starting to think that it's a bunch of SF. Still researching.
A friend of a friend works preserving endangered fish and stopped by today to check out my pond. A few throws of the net got us 50 or so 1" long fish. He said they were PS , GSF and BG. Good news is he thinks adding some predator fish will work since there are plenty of forage fish. Thinking HSB. Thoughts? Thanks
Hey Geoff,
FWIW IMHO I would go ahead and stock the HSB, if that is yer predator of choice, and let them have a good feed on all those little fish. Take advantage of all those little SF to get some good HSB fishing/harvest. You can always drain and restart the pond after you have a good HSB harvest. I would stock the HSB at a higher rate if I went this way. Lots of 2 lb HSB for the freezer before the forage runs out.
Edit: If it was me, I would stock "put and take" LMB to get the bigger mouth gap to maximize utilization of the existing forage before I nuked the pond.
Bill D.
I'm picking up 50 4" - 6" LMB Tuesday. Will see how it goes...........
Tons of 1 inch SF and stocking 4 to 6 inch LMB.....IMHO sounds like a perfect match! I doubt 50 LMB will make a big difference this year but, once they spawn next year, the pond dynamics could change drastically. The wild card are the crappies.
Please report back as things progress. IMHO good experiment for lots of us to learn from. You can always go ahead with nuking the pond if you don't like the results.
Bill D.
I got to the fishery and lucky me, they had just gotten in HSB 8" - 10". So ended up getting 50 of those
. Was a lot of fun putting them in the pond. I'll have to figure out how to post the video of my 3 year old grabbing them. Thanks for all the advice thus far.
You should have a lot of fun catching those Geoff. Those guys should grow pretty quick with all that 1 to 2 inch SF forage. IMHO with only 50 in a one acre, I will be surprised if they will have much impact on your SF over population problem though.