Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Fixing an old neglected Crappie/Bass Pond

We convinced some friends of ours to buy some land near us here in Tennessee and part of the land included a 1/3 acre pond. No one had done anything with this pond in a long time. The dam had partially washed out and pushed the water level down to about 6' from about 9'. (we'll be fixing the dam later)

Anyway, we fished the pond and just sat and watched it for several weeks over different times etc and we caught a fair number of small crappie and a small number of small bass. The avg crappie was 6"maybe getting up to 8" (nothing large enough I would want to spend the time cleaning to eat) and the bass were all small in the 8" to 10" range for the most part and a few at maybe 12". Not many though. Also, all of the fish were thin.

We noticed that there were no forage fish anywhere to be found. No minnows, nothing small so I'm assuming that they are eating their own since there is nothing else for them to eat in the pond.

My thought at this point is to introduce some FHM in pretty large numbers to help make sure that the feeding frenzy they are likely to trigger leaves some of them uneaten. My thought at this point was 1000 FHM just to see what happens. They won't be moving down here full time for a few years so there won't be a lot of work being done to the pond for a while, but it would be nice to start working towards fixing the fish balance and sizes.

Steve, I would rather remove the problem than try to feed the masses. My thought, for a long term solution, would be to pump it dry and start over.

Yes, like Dave said, that would be the general consensus on the fix.

1000 FHM would weigh how much? possibly 10#? If so, the statistics say that would add a total of 1# to your fish. 1# divided up among how many hundreds of fish? Get the idea of how insignificant the time and money just spent on that is?

Some would fish it hard and remove every crappie they catch, and keep every underperforming bass they catch. But if you can't put the time into that, well do what Dave suggests. Also there are some here on the forum that try to manage their crappie ponds, but they also have to fish it a lot, and then some. Seems like there is about a 50/50 mix that just give up the battle after a year or two and start over.

No question that the easiest, most complete fix would be to pump her dry and start ovr. If no one is going to manage the pond with any regularity [feed, monitor fish population etc]for a while, you could just stock forage fish, shiners and fatheads, and let them expand for a couple years, then introduce a limited number of predators and have a great run. You could also add the forage, then add a predator that won't reproduce [HSB] during the unmanaged phase.

If you don't want to drain-you could add a few flatheads. In a small pond with limited cover, they'll fix your crappie problem. Of course, then you'll have a flathead problem if you restock without draining, but at least that's a more interesting problem.

In any event, adding fatheads, shiners, or any other forage species to such an already unbalanced pond probably won't fix anything--just adding snacks, as FnC suggested.

Closer to 3 to 3.5 lbs I think. IMHO Unless you have tons of cover for them, 1000 FHM will be gone in a week or less

Now is the time to get this fixed, then when your friends are a little closer to being on site the pond will be great and a lot of fun to fish

There is no way the pond will get drained or the dam permanently fixed for at least 5 years, possibly longer. I would wager it'll be 5 to 7 before they get a chance to do anything major to it. He has 2 more years in the Downer's Grove FD and then they need to build a house and all the other stuff needed to get moved. Cash for a major pond overhaul is totally out of the question.

As nice as it would be to fix it now, it's jut not in the cards.

One end of the pond runs up a run off channel that appears to stay pretty full most of the time but is choked with vegitation. The plan is to release the minnows there and fish any time they are down here to 1 - see what we are catching and 2 - to pull a few fish out of there for dinner. Even if the minnows only last a few days it'll be fun and cheap just to see what happens.

See if there is anywhere around that you can buy some bigger bass or hybrid striped bass.

I am definitely not a pro. I would not want to spend money to trade one problem for another. If I understand the problem, too many crappie in a 1/3 acre pond, nuking the pond is not an option and there are already LMB in the pond, I have no suggestions other than stocking a few FHC to clear it up over time and then hope I could get the FHC out.....???? Hopefully, a pro will offer a better suggestion than that!

Is the pond shape and possible structure within conducive to seining?

If you didn't get every fish perhaps you would get many, plenty, or most fish by seining? Then you could start with the forage base and next year add predator(s) if in a year's time you're not landing any predator fish.

@Bill - I may have not been too clear - I think that the problem is that there are almost no fish in the pond at all. Two of us fished the pond pretty hard last fall the day after they closed on the property and after about 4 hours we had caught less than 8 fish and I think we caught the same one a couple times. We fished it multiple times since then as well. We are catching almost nothing no matter how small we go with the hooks and bait.

I have another neighbor with a neglected pond (there are a lot of those around here) and we can yank fish out of there all day long one after another but they are all very very small except that one big catfish.

We've talked about walking a net across the pond since it's pretty shallow and that will help us see what is in there better. We've also talked about shocking the pond just to see what we are starting with. That may be an option next year.

A 1/3 acre pond would not cost more than a couple thousand, tops, to drain and completely renovate. My swag would be the crappie had a huge spawn recruitment, and stunted very badly.

I am most definitely NOT one of the pros on here; but "the dam had partially washed out" tells me that water has run over the dam which tells me other fish could swim in. I had purchased a pond of about that size with seemingly only a few smaller bass in it. Puzzled us until the 14 pound channel cat was caught. We then drained, rotenoed and only had a very few more small bass float up. You may already have a big predator in there.

If they have money to shock, they can probably can get money to drain, rotenoe, repair dam putting pipe in overflow) and restock with forage instead. I doubt it would cost that much if you check around.

Several years of grass shrimp, scuds and fatheads reproducing without other predators could result in a great forage base when the time comes to stock.

Just put the FHM in and see what happens. Maybe put in 20#. Like you said, it is cheap, and you can always nuke the pond later. I would ensure plenty cover, let them spawn, and check on progress next year. Sound like you have time to play with it.
My .02