Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations crappie in north idaho

have a i acre lake abiut 20 to 25ft deep at the deepest in north idaho. would like to raise crappie only. if i put shinners in the pond do they reproduce so as to feed th crappie. will crappie do alright in north idaho. the water freezes over each year.

budman - I have doubts as to the long term success of this idea. mechanical error. Discussion continued in next item.

budman - I have doubts as to the long term success of this idea. If you could keep the crappie from spawning or drastically reduce spawn success you would have much better chance of growing lots of large crappie WHEN stocked by themselves. There has been some discussion on this board and the NCRAC website (http://aquanic.org) about development or creation of triploid crappies (sterile). But they are not available yet. Blk crappie tend to grow better in clearer water & white crappie often "do better" in cloudier water. Several points or hurdles to overcome for this single species stocking to succeed.

Preface. Keep in mind your location and in northern ID you have a short growing season and crappie will grow slower for you than for our southern neighbors.

1. Crappies as large cleanable individuals are primarily minnow eaters and are generally pretty difficult to train to eat pellets. Cecil Baird did purchase some rare pellet trained crappies. But even with them, very few of their offspring will learn to eat pellets which means all the offspring that survive will have to eat large quanities of invertebrates and/or minnows for continued, fast, optimum growth.

2. Crappies can be very prolific under the right conditions. Real high numbers of them will very easily clean out your edible sized minnows. Blk crappie are thought to eat a little more percentage of insect/invertebrates than whites. When food becomes limiting, as with all fish, then no growth occurs for any size group of crappie. All stay the same size until food becomes abundant enough for growth to resume.

3. Lets explore this a little further. If you have an initial stocking of say 500 crappie per acre. NOTE: If we were stocking bgill we could stock more, maybe 700 to 1000/acre because they feed lower on the food chain ( eat mostly zooplankton & bugs not minnows). Ponds grow more pounds per acre of bugs (abt 10X) than minnows.
Also bgill will readily eat pellets and the bug food can be supplimented with pellets. This way we can easily insure ample food for bgill. This is the reason we stock fewer crappie per acre than bgill.

So for our 500 crappie to grow to one pound (a 11"-12" fish & abt 6 yr old) each needs to eat abt 10 lbs of minnows/fish/bugs which converts to 5000 lbs of total minnows to feed 500 crappie. This is probably a "doable" thing if you only have 500 crappie. BUT by the time the crappie are 6" (2-3 yr in your area)they are capable of spawning. A 1st spawn can easily overpopulate the pond where not enough food is now availabe for all to grow. Depending on survival of young, food becomes limiting very fast and overall growth grinds to a snail pace or stops. A 3 - 4 yr old female crappie has 33000 to 44000 eggs. Now instead of 500 crappie you can easily have 500 + 5000 young. Now to get all these growing to 1/2 lb each (9", 4 yr old) it's going to take around 27500 lbs of insects and minnows. The second spawn will add even more young hungry crappie to the pond.

Theory: My estimate of 5000 young surviving from the first hatch is a distinct possibility. If our 500 initial stock were 50% female(250), and let's say 200 spawn with 30000 eggs each, this = 6,000,000 eggs. Survival of 1/10th% to one year old gives 6000 young of the year fish or 30 young from each of the 200 nesting females. An estimate of 5000 for survival is a fairly low estimate of survival since crappie are nest spawners with parential care. Nest spawners typically have higher survivability of eggs compared to those of broadcast spawners with no parential care of fertilized eggs. Unprotected eggs are very vulnerable to various types of loss. Note: Survival of young of the 2nd generation would be quite a bit less than 5000 due to greater predation of hatchlings by first adults and 1st generation fish.

4. I fished a pond this summer that was stocked (1992) similar to what you want to do. The owner besides crappie also added yellow perch and catfish; no bass. Yearly adds minnows. He regularly feeds the fish but only the catfish and perch eat pellets. I fished (worm&bobber) primarily for perch since I was sampling perch for a article I am writing about growing perch in small ponds. In 90 min, he & I caught 18 perch and 18 crappie. Perch ranged from 6" to 11.2" long whereas crappie were all 6" - 6.25" long (1 was 8.2") with large eyes indicating that they were stunted. Crappie were overpopulated and overeating the food source but keeping the perch population thinned down to allow the surviving, pellet eating perch to grow. The few catfish present were also helping somewhat to thin the perch and crappie.

5. If you stock crappie with and without predators you need some means to keep the spawn to a minimum or be able to severly thin the numbers/offspring when necessary to insure good growth of remaining fish.

Bill thank you for the great info on crappie.My thought was to keep the crappie offspring to a minimum by putting in some big rainbow trout or big bass that all are sterile,i know i can get rainbows like that,not sure about bass. I want to eat alot of the crappie, is there a fish that taste better then a crappie? i thought i read about some fresh water perch that actually is better then a crappie, i find that hard to believe but am open minded and will raise them instead of crappie if necessary. I really love crappie, there some much fun to caught and to eat.Bill how about the ice cold spring run off that fills the lake, will it be to cold for warm water fish like crappie or big perch? The lake also freezes over solid ea. year. I am going to install an aerator soon so that doesn't happen.The water is really cold up in Idaho hope that won't be a problem. Thanks Bill

I am by far not "the authority" on crappie but I do have some experience with them in smaller ponds.

Edibility & taste preference of fish are very personal. Crappie are very mild but tend to get a little soft flesh (fall apart) when slightly overcooked. Other similar & tasty common pond fish for you are bgill, yellow perch, walleye. Each fish seems to have a following for edibility. My self I prefer yellow perch and bgill as the two mildest tasting fish. Some say y.perch tend to be little sweet flavored. Perch & bgill tend to have firmer flesh than crappie but all 3 have similar flavor in my opinion.

I think y.perch will do better in your particular pond w/ trout than crappie especially if you can obtain feed trained perch. Perch are more active in colder water than crappie. As an example perch spawn at 50 to 53F compared to crappie who spawn at 62 - 68F. Crappie in my opinion are a warmer water fish than y.perch.

You will also be able to more easily control the perch numbers/offspring compared to crappie. Trout will also be able to prey on more and larger perch than the crappie.

Icecover is not a problem for either fish but extended snow cover of a leaf infested pond is problematic. If you aerate, for winter aeration I would move the diffuser to the extreme one end and leave the remaining pond frozen for a deep warmer water refuge area at the other end. My opinion is that Removing snow is more important than keeping open water for your application but IF you have high snow fall and extended deep snow cover then an open water area by aeration may be more practical.

I'm not sure the big trout/bass plan will work to adequately control the crappie. Better choice would be high numbers of small trout or small bass. To control crappies you want to fairly quickly thin them as smaller fish. This will remove more numbers quick rather than waiting until they have eaten more of the food resources, grown, and then get ate as a bigger fish where fewer & larger fish more quickly fill up the predators. Did that make sense? You want the smaller predators eat more of the smaller sized prey before they get too big; heavy thinning earlier the better. You want a high thinning of numbers at early life stages before they get too wide to be easily swallowed which crappie rapidly do. Bigger fish tend to eat/prefer bigger food items.

Perch on the other hand, stay slender and remain vulnerable to predation for a long time during their life span (could be a disadvantage). Slender body easy to swallow; can lid shape hard to swallow. Keep in mind that the extent of bottom cover (weeds & dense hiding places) also play a BIG part in the predator prey relationship and how effective the predators are.

What type of shiners reproduce and grow well in northern ID?

I currently have two projects near Bonners Ferry; one for Kootenai Indians and one w/ ID Dept of Fish & Game. Both studies are on Kootenai Rv.

Thanks for all the info Bill.

That's the first intellegent response with definitive reasons for not stocking crappie in
smaller ponds that I've seen on this site.

Bill thats was a great response!!! man I thank you! This helps in more of am inteligent stocking choices.
I am in the Atlanta GA area and plan on building an 8.2 acre lake. I will have crappie in it. But will have to manage it properly.
budman made a point of stock some "Big Bass" and trout to keep the Crappie numbers down, he also mentioned that they were going to be steriel. I have often asked the question about stocking a bigger more aggresive predetor than Large mouth Bass..like a Hybrid stripper, Blue Cat, or even FlatHeads? Do you know of any one who has tried this to keep crappie numbers some what under control? By the way these three species of fish DO NOT reproduce in lakes and ponds, so ther numbers could be easily controlled.

big_pond, i purchased my 8 acre lake in va just over a year ago. it was built 22 years ago and stocked at that time with black crappie, bass, bluegill and a few channel cats. it was never managed and rarely fished for all those 20 years. as expected, it was full of stunted, skinney bass when i began to fish it. but all those bass DID keep the crappie in check. my family has fished the lake heavily for the past 16 months, and have removed nearly 200 bass. we have only caught about a dozen crappie though. i don't know if wipers, blue cats or flat heads will effectively control crappie, but i have read several times on this site that large numbers of bass often will. my lake has shown this to be true. good luck with your new project, jb

My personal preference would also be for Perch, they are tasty, easy to fillet and are a good match for colder waters. I might suggest adding the stockign ofd some redears/Shell Crackers to the equation to help control the snail/parasite population as yellow perch seem quite suceptible to 'infection' in my experience.

Pottsy -- similar to you, we've sure seen yellow grub problems with yellow perch in some of our small impoundments. I assume it's a result of the submergent aquatic plants, and the plentiful snails that accompany the plants. However, we need the plants for the largemouth bass to do well in their reproduction and survival.

Unfortunately, we're just a little too far north for shellcrackers (redear sunfish). I sure would like to use them; they are a dandy pond fish. We used them in some ponds when I was working in Kansas.

Wanting to do something here in South Dakota, I took a little bit of a risk, and introduced pumpkinseeds into a 20-acre pond. Pumpkinseeds are somewhat the shellcracker of the north, as they also eat a lot of snails. However, they are unlike shellcrackers in that pumpkinseeds commonly overpopulate and stunt. We've got both walleyes and largemouth bass as predators, so I'm hoping the pumpkinseeds will be kept in check.

I assume it will take several years to see an effect, and even then it may be hard to tell if the pumpkinseeds helped. However, we thought we should try something. When you've got fillets from 10 to 14 inch yellow perch, and the fillets are full of grubs, it's a little frustrating.

Dave