Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations stocking crappie

i have a few questions

how could you manage black crappie in a 3/4 acre pond?
the pond already has a good bluegill population as well as small 6-8 inch bass

i am thinking of stocking 2-3 inch crappie in the fall would a
6-8 inch bass be able to eat them

if so how many should i stock

I know you really want a crappie pond. But . . .

I don't think that many 2-3 inch crappie would survive if you have 6-8 inch bass. And that gets to the point of how many. I'd say, it would have to be in very high numbers, probably in the very high hundreds or thousands, if just a few were to survive long enough to successfully spawn. I doubt this size crappie would spawn next spring. It would probably be at least the following spring before they would spawn.

It would be better to try and segregate the crappie from the rest of the pond until they could grow to at least twice that size.

The real problem is that they are so unpredictable, and they are both a predator and forage. They can really unbalance a pond.

Because of my pond's profile favoring big bluegill, my crappie are kept under reasonable control. We only catch about 15 per year. They are generally between 12 and 15 inches, but their fillets are paper thin. I've got a gazillion hungry bass, a fair number of large wide-mouth channel and white catfish, and I put very hungry trout in the pond during the winter.

I know I'm not very encouraging. There are always surprises and exceptions -- sometimes good, sometimes a little less than good.

At least for me, I sure prefer my thick bluegill, my overweight red eared sunfish, the feisty winter trout, the underweight bass, and my up-and-down population of put-and-take catfish. They all provide great fun for four generations of family, plus many very fine meals.

Unfortunately, I would restrict crappie -- black or white, to large public waters where they can thrive and be controlled by many other predators.

There are many of us who would really love to have a fantastic crappie pond. We just haven't found the secret.

Good luck,
Ken

Look at the archive on Crappie here. It has tons of data on the difficulty of crappie in ponds. SEP has the best results using TShad , WC and HSB.

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

I have crappie in my ponds just like Ken and just like Ken we very rarely catch them. They are are more unpredictable than most other fish.

How is your structure setup. Do you happen to have any thing like Christmas Trees and such?

yeah we pushed an old tree in the pond about four years ago


also what could i add to help protect young fish like fingerling bluegill or crappie from pretators like bass

I am not an expert on this so I will just give you some ideas. I think wooden Pallets may work as I put them in for FHM and the GSF took them over, now some of the smaller bass could possibly get into it but not sure if they would care to or not.

Also if you have weed cover or vegetation of some sort they hid in there, and the bass usually just hang out at the edge and wait rather than work hard to swim thru it to eat.

Are you trying to get crappie to survive?

I am sure if you have them and they spawn successfully you will have plenty that make it, the problem is that you may just have too many small ones that are not too interested in being hooked.

You may want to try to add some more brush piles that are more dense like Christmas Trees etc. Logs and such attract bass as well.

I wish I could be more help but I am also trying to figure out what I should or should not put in to make it easier for crappie to grow large yet not overpopulate.

I personally would prefer that they not spawn and just add some larger fish from other BOW's. I have yet to find a study that says if you do not add this, or plant that then Crappie will not spawn.

Maybe some others will be along to post there thoughts but most on here recommend not to even stock them as you run into all of these questions, concerns, unknowns ect.

I think it comes down to being able to handle your pond possibly being taken over and ruined by the crappie.

This is why I am considering adding some to a pond that really needs to be fixed but we do not have the money right now to do so.

If I can get some nice slabs out of it for say 2-5 years before it crashes maybe then I will have the money to drain and repair, then I can see if I have tons of small crappie all the same size or if they just died off.

I plan to post it on here if I follow through with it for those who are interested in watching a fellow PB'er slowing kill his pond.

LOL

I am trying to stock small 1-3,4 inch fish and dont want the bass to eat all of them

Could you bump them up to 5", this would help?

Why are you wanting to stock such small fish?

What all types of fish are you wanting to stock?

i cant find any fish that are larger from local stockers
I want to stock
1. fathead minnows
2. shellcracker(redear sunfish)
3. channel catfish
4th was black crappie but i decided not to stock them
i am going to feed the pond

I love catching Crappie, prob 2nd or 3rd Fav fish but I haven't yet seen a pond (larger then maybe an arce) able to keep balance with them in it. I always see 1 of 2 things happen, they overpopulated, get stunted and near destroy all other populations of species or they are so few that you may get lucky and catch 1 or 2 in a years time.

With a really small pond I would think they could be easily managed though, just either have to eat a lot of them or if your too weak hearted to throw them on the bank (like me :P ) dump them in a river (long as its a native fish to the river). Edit: most places its Illegal to stock fish in public water without permits so make sure about the laws before doing that.


I do have a good example there was a pond up the road (maybe close to an acre) that use to have a slight balance of Crappie, BG and LMB. People would target the BG and Crappie, the bass and Bg were Decent size and bass numbers were also decent, Crappie size and numbers seemed Balanced, weren't huge Crappie but a lot of good size ones, you'd catch a mix of each species in a fishing outage. Edit and note: to me it seemed fairly balanced, I'm mostly guessing cause this was years ago, right now the pond has been over fished and is in bad condition..

Well I think I may be able to get some of the Hybrid Crappie this fall or next spring so if that is the case I am going to go for it and see if it is true what they say about them not spawning as much and taking over a pond.

Like I said it they happen to ruin it after about 3-5 years of nice fish I will be happy and by then the water probably won't be more than 3 feet deep anyway so it will have to be fixed.

Anyone on here tried the hybrid crappie yet?

If so what results did you have?

TJ Hudson has tried them... He just stocked them this year if I recall correctly, so the results aren't in yet.

That will be interesting to hear about them. Do you know the number and size that was stocked?

Look in the archives, I am pretty sure it is all there...

Here is the thread. If you can't find it there let us know.

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

Bass Shepherd, there is a crappi option for you....Hybrid Black Crappie. Control and population have not been an issue as the offspring are inferior and easily controlled. The biggest downside is that they are more of a put and take fish.

This is the same crappie I want to try out. I guess my concern is how many should be stocked, and what other fish to stock with them?

What options besides Shad, FHM, Shiners do I have to use as forage for the crappie?

Again the ponds these would go are: .25, .5, 1.5 acres.

What size should be stocked in case LMB are present?

To prevent predation, stock crappie that are longer than 1/3 the length of the largest LMB present...

If you were going to stock a pond just for hybrid crappies, I would stock HSB as the predator so I could closely control their numbers and sizes and utilize GSH and TFS in larger ponds as forage.

I would be interested to see where the hybrids fall in comparison to their parental species in their utilization of invertebrates in their diet...