Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Crappie

OK guys,
I have caught hundreds of white crappie in Kentucky Lake in 25' of water over brush piles on minnows- somehwat muddy water. I have caught some beautiful black crappie in the backwaters of Long Lake, MN in 2' of water in a 6' diameter opening in the lilly pads, on nightcrawlers- clear water.
Can I conclude that the BC eat more zooplankton because of the location that they seem to prefer? And the same goes for WC? And applying this to a large pond, the BC seems to be a better fit, because they don't eat as many small fish? But because a pond environment is on a smaller scale, a guy might force the BC to adapt to eating more small fish?
I ask these questions because I really would like to stock some BC in my pond at some point. I know all the advise is against it. Somebody had stocked some WC in our last pond and everybody enjoyed catching them. I monitered a trap to keep track of the young fish. I never trapped a baby crappie. I assume the bass took care of them. I did notice a decline in the baby bass over the years.

Brad B.

Dave, I'll take a stab at this one. Why exactly do some fish have spines, anyway? The logical answer might be that the spines make young fish less palatable to large predators. Maybe a predator that has a chance to prey on young fish would choose soft rayed fish like shad first. Shad quite possibly adapted to their lack of spine or other good defense mechanisms with increased fecundity. Why does the white crappie have fewer spines? You got me. Some biological structures are eventually lost over time from lack of use. I think they call them vestiges or vestigial organs. An example of that would be human 3rd molars or "wisdom teeth". As humans have less and less need for large molar surface area to grind raw, whole grains there seems to be a movement towards fewer wisdom teeth. It's not unusual at all for our patients to reach their teen years to find out that they have less than a standard issue of third molars. Three, two, one and sometimes no wizzies at all. It's all speculation, but fun just the same.

In the local lakes around Lincoln, NE the few water bodies that maintain year-around clarity and have good emergent, submergent vegetation systems seem to have predominantly black crappie populations. The reservoirs with agricultural runoff problems and cloudy water are always primarily white crappie. This may not have a huge impact on small water status. One thing that seems to be true is that in small waters with only whites or blacks and good water quality is that the general body condition of blacks seems to exceed that of whites. I'm just really convinced that all other things being equal, in a pond system with no shad and reasonably clear water that black crappie will outperform white crappie over time. If you find me wrong, invite me over and I'll catch out all of the crappie for you.

I find it useful to think of crappie stunting as a process similar to a disease. With a disease, we try to identify the life stages of the disease so we can look for different ways of attacking it. Bob Lusk has said many times that it’s not if but when a crappie population will stunt. This implies that a crappie population can remain in equilibrium with its environment until some sort of trigger sets it off. He has also said that crappie are erratic spawners. It is likely that a large spawn is the trigger that sets this process off.

Two things can happen. One is that a large crappie spawn destroys a bass year class and we immediately have a stunted crappie population. In this case we have to keep a large crappie spawn from ever occurring. The other is that it takes the loss of 2 or 3 bass year classes to allow a stunted crappie population to develop. In this case, once we see symptoms develop, we can take action.

It seems more likely that it takes 2-3 years for a stunted crappie population to develop. Others with more knowledge than I will have to comment on this.

HSB and saugeyes (hybrid walleyes and sauger) have successfully been used to stabilize crappie populations. My guess is that it isn’t the type of fish but rather a supplemental stocking of predators that does the job.

The management solution is the supplemental stocking of predators.

If you read back all of the posts about managing fish, you will seldom, if ever, see this management technique even suggested. This is all changing because of one single event--interest in HSB.

Bruce Condello’s knowledge and enthusiasm for HSB is showing us that not only are they are great game fish but also that they are a reasonable addition to our small lakes.

While HSB can successfully reproduce (yes, Dave Willis, even I can learn), they seldom do reproduce in our small lakes. That means we have to learn how to manage a non-reproducing fish in our lakes. The biggest problem is an established population of LMB. We must learn how big fish must be to survive predation. We have to learn how many fish to add per acre. We have to learn how often to stock (yearly, every two years etc.). We will learn about costs per acre per year. And the most important thing, we will learn that it is worth our time and money to do this. Slowly, this will become an accepted management technique for small lakes.

To understand how dramatic of a change in thinking this is, imagine someone suggesting using exactly the same technique with LMB. Most fisheries managers would discount it immediately. I think that supplemental stocking of predators at the start of the stunting process would control crappies.

Norm, I'm certainly not the more learned person to comment but the key consideration could be the erratic spawning that Lusk mentioned. It could be that predators can control crappie if they don't erratically spawn for several contigous years. Predators might control a normal yearly boom or bust situation but could become overwhelmed with 2 or 3 years of big crappie spawns. The resulting extra crappie could overwhelm the other denizens spawning and further tip the scales. It sounds like it can be done but might take intense management.

Spines effect movement as well as predation. These fish live in very diffrent enviroments and it is not suprising that they have fins of diffrent sizes. I bet that there is a graduate thesis on fish ecology and behavior in that topic.

Lakes that are in need of crappie managment are generaly lakes that already have stunted crappie populations with little or no predators. I would guess that this is not a matter of one good crappie year class or even three. But rather that age 0 crappie out compete other age 0 fish for zooplankton and cause repeated year class faliures. BG have been shown to prevent successful walleye spawns at high densities, not through predation but through competition for zooplankton resources. Because crappie spwan in mass before other species crappie fry could desimate a zooplankton comunity. Stocking fingerling predators circumvents this problem.

Most likely it doesn't matter what you stock into a stunted crappie pond, as long as it eats fish. I would suggest that instead of planning for a boom crappie spawn plan for bust bass spawns. Taking steps to increase bass recruitment may be an effective step to prevent the exclusion of bass.

Maybe my ignorance will show; but if consumption is the main concern of raising crappie and maintaining a balanced pond why couldn't the crappie be feed trained? Maybe it is not feasible but it seems to me that it would counteract the controversy some what.??

Crappie are notoriously difficult to feed train. It can be done, and Cecil Baird knows a heck of a lot more than I, but it requires a lot of time and effort to feed train them, and even then many never catch on to the idea.

Is the amount of microorganisms the controlling factor in crappie stunting? I would think that gizzard shad would eat many more organisms than crappie. Still, Bob Lusk recommends them in some situations and they don't cause a decrease in LMB populations.

It may have to do with the type of organisms. If gizzards eat lots of small zooplankton they may leave the larger zooplankton that the bass prefer. Also gizzard shad and yoy bass inhabit diffrent areas of the pond and therefore compete for diffrent resources. Also would you put gizzard shad into a unfertalized 5 acre pond?

An interesting paper just appeared a couple of days ago in one of our technical fisheries journals. Gizzard shad densities tend to be lower in waters with submersed aquatic plants, and thus the negative effects of shad are more likely to occur in waters without plants.

I know we have a variety of readers. For those of you more interested in technical information, I will post the paper's abstract below.

Transactions of the American Fisheries Society: Vol. 134, No. 1, pp. 149–159.

Age-0 Gizzard Shad Abundance Is Reduced in the Presence of Macrophytes: Implications for Interactions with Bluegills

Paul H. Michaletz, Missouri Department of Conservation, 1110 South College Avenue, Columbia, Missouri 65201, USA

Joseph L. Bonneau, Missouri Department of Conservation, 3424 Northwest Duncan Road, Blue Springs, Missouri 64015, USA

Abstract.—The abundance of gizzard shad Dorosoma cepedianum may be reduced in the presence of macrophytes, which may lessen the frequently observed negative interactions with coinhabiting bluegills Lepomis macrochirus. We used a series of experimental pond studies and a small-lake data set to examine relationships among gizzard shad, bluegills, and macrophytes. Fall age-0 gizzard shad abundance was lower in vegetated experimental ponds than in unvegetated ponds, but mean total length (TL) did not differ. Larval gizzard shad abundance did not differ between vegetated and unvegetated ponds, but the relative survival of age-0 gizzard shad (ratio of fall juveniles to the total number of larvae collected) was higher in unvegetated ponds. In ponds with macrophyte coverage ranging from 0% to 100%, age-0 gizzard shad abundance declined with increasing macrophyte coverage; however, age-0 bluegill abundance was unrelated to macrophyte coverage. The abundance and size of age-0 gizzard shad and age-0 bluegills were unrelated in these ponds. By examining the small-lake data, we found that the proportion of lakes containing gizzard shad decreased with increasing macrophyte coverage. The proportion of bluegill populations containing large adults (>203 mm TL) increased with macrophyte coverage for lakes with gizzard shad but not for lakes without gizzard shad. Although the actual mechanisms are not clear, we suggest that competitive interactions between gizzard shad and adult bluegills are density dependent and lessen with increasing macrophyte coverage because of decreasing gizzard shad abundance.

Actually there may be exceptions to that Bruce. I had one trout grower tell me they seine crappies out of ponds and put them in raceways for the winter and they feed on the trout chow just like the trout. Unfortunately this grower is the one that hauled them with the 2 to 3 pound trout and they took a beating with many succumbing to fungus.

My supplier this spring has feed trained crappies and he is the one that will have the feed trained redears. He's only a couple of hours away at the most and I will probably put them in oxygen bags to get them home. I'll even cover the bags to keep light out which may help.

Could it be that most growers don't bother feed training crappies because it's less labor intensive to not feed them or feed train them, and they just let them grow out on zooplankton in ponds?

Dave,

It would make sense that shad are more numerous when there are less macrophytes as that would mean more nutrients are going into phytoplankton and hence into zooplankton which the shad feed primarily on. Bluegill do better with more macrophytes as that means more insects etc., is a cover for the young, and I have examined the stomach contents of bluegills that have plant material in their stomaches.

Cecil, What direction do you go to attain feed-trained crappie and/or redears? I looked up how to get to Ligonier, IN already...just curious if your source is closer or farther away from Lincoln, NE.

Here is a theroy...
macrophytes may be limited by water clarity or water depth. High macrophyte coverage means more shallow water. Deep water serves as a refuge for large zooplankton during the day, they migrate to avoid fish predation. With out a deep water refuge the large zoops. and cladocerans might not survive. The diffrences in the lake morphology may create diffrences in the zooplankton community that inhibit gizzard shad survival.
Macrophytes may also increase predation on age 0 shad, or inhibit foraging behavior. Forcing age 0 GS to live in close contact with adult BG may increase BG predation on YOY shad.

Excellent points!

Bruce it's a little farther away by a couple of hours east. If you figure out a way to pick up the redears (Cooler(s) with oxygen and an oxygen stone would work fine for the amount you will probably get) you are welcome to rest at my house before you head back. Otherwise I will look into Fedexing the fish in oxygen bags in boxes. Or you could go to the trouble of using my tank and trailer but then you would have to drive all the way back which I would not recommend.

I plan on getting a smaller trailer that I can pull behind a passenger car and rigging up a larger cooler or two with an oxygen airstone for when I have to pick up fairly small orders verses larger ones.

Cecil, The striper fishing guides in Texas use a cast net to catch shad for bait. They put some kind of solution in the water of their large bait tank that helps keep them alive during hauling. Do you know what it is and/or have you used it?

Dave,

Not exactly but I see a lot of additives for bait in the Aquatic Ecosystems catalog such as "Tranquil," "Better Bait," "Finer Shiner" etc. When I haul trout and perch I use a product called "Sure Haul" that reduces stress, accumulation of ammonia, nitrate, and prevents foam up, which I add uniodized salt to. I haven't lot a fish yet in the hauling tank and I've hauled for up to 13 hours.

You can get a bottle of powder called Shad Keeper(I think that is the name) at Bass Pro Shops that does the same thing that Cecil's talking about. I just bought some last weekend to help with transfering some gizzard shad. It's a pretty good sized container and cost less than $10.

I've been away from this site for some time, almost two years I think.

Just finished this 5 page thread. Outstanding Read!!!!!

Welcome back Flatlander! It has been a couple of years since we last heard from you. Whatcha been up to??

Russ

Hey Russ,

It is funny that I remember so many of the posters and their past stories.

I'm still in Maine (wife loves it and doesn't want to leave). I'd like to come back down south but......

Anyway, still playing with my little pond project with my next door neighbor. Slow going there.

I just posted under Meadowlarks “My Pond” and you’ll get a sense of the fun I’ve been having around my project. Don’t get me wrong about living in Maine, it mostly is great and the fishing here is outstanding on public waters. For example, I took an 8 hour float down the Androscoggin River this past Saturday with my wife’s partner (in practice together) and we caught smallies consistently the entire trip. I personally landed 5 or 6 fish in the 4-5 lb class. He also caught 2 rainbows slightly over 18 inches and I got a brown that was just over 4 lbs. So the fishing is great. I still pine away for the South however.

The good news is the family estate back in MS is about the settle and my father will get to start work on his pond project that has been on hold (due to the estate and family squabbling) for the past three years. I’m hot to get going as nobody is getting any younger. Daddy has decided to improve an existing 1.5 acre pond that is on his piece of the place and I intend to hit the site hard during this process. He thinks that I know something about pond management because I can repeat what I’ve heard on the boards. I suppose this new project got me back and I’m excited about it chatting with the old gang again.

Gordon

I don't think Crappie would be so bad if they all grew like this one!

Come on 3z, give us the story behind that fish. The waters look small and its without a doubt, a slab.

Flatlander,

Thanks for the update. A good number of new members have hit the board since you last checked in so there are, like you mentioned, a lot of good stories/projects to catch up on. You'll certainly have to keep us up to speed with your dad's project. Mississippi to Maine......thats a heck of a commute

Russ