Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking New guy with a couple questions

Ive been reading here and gathering a bunch of great info, Thx guys!

I have a pond, about 1 - 1.5 acres, around 13-14 yrs old. It was built just before I bought my property and they guy had stocked it with black crappie, LMB and "Georgia giants" along with some large channel cats. The crappie have taken over I think.
At this point the GG's are pretty much gone along with the majority of the LMB and the cats are definitely gone, otters got those I think.

My pond was built in a ravene so its deep at one end and has steep sides, it's 22' deep at the deepest and the sides are about 45 degrees pitch so theres very little shallow area for BG beds. They left alot of the trees on one side of the pond in the water so there is alot of cover but most of the pond gets full sun although there are large trees surrounding the pond that give some shade at different times of the day.

Right now I have tons of real small bream, about 4 weeks ago I bought 100 HBG and 100 C cats along with 3500 FH minnows. We saw 3 large LMB cruising the edge following the FH schools in the week after stocking.

We have a feeder feeding 4 times a day near the center of the pond and they are eating the food pretty well. The FH's are gone, I havent seen any of the 6" CC since I poured them from the bag but have seen several of the HBG. I want to transplant some more 12" LMB from my neighbors pond to eat some of the bream there, anyone see a problem with doing this or have any suggestions as to what I can do to get the LMB back?

A couple of thoughts, not an expert opinion.

I expect the big LMB's ate the small cats, or at least, a bunch of them. I doubt that they got all of the fatheads this quick. If you have tons of "bream" that ain't real bad. That is bass food and how the LMB got big. Bass will usually go for them and the small crappie. Can you catch some of the small bream and identify them? What makes you think need any other bass? Those large bass should spawn and supply plenty of predators. With a pond full of small bream and crappie, you probably didn't need the fatheads.

The crappie just might be a real problem if they have taken over. For this reason, you might need more 12 inch bass to get them under control.

Once you get bass, you should only stock 10 to 12 inch C cats.

You probably need to do some more analysis and supply us with a little information.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, welcome to Pond Boss. Keep the questions coming. We're junkies.

Thx for the thoughts, thing is I'm not seeing bass anymore, we used to catch small ones but havent caught a bass in along time. I saw 3 LMB that were 16-18 inches long cruising the bank after the FH schools, but none since. We do catch 5-6" crappie regularly tho, along with the larger ones, up to 14 inches. Thats why I'm thinking I should add some more bass. I'm sure I can catch some of the small bream, let me see if I can post some pics of those.

Thx again!

I think it sounds like a sure thing that the crappie are preying on your bass fingerlings. Heck, the 3 large ones might be all the same sex.

i think i need to fish the pond to give you any more opinions.....since i am from sc, too.

do a search on the crappie. a lot of the guys on here discourage stocking the crappie with the other species you have. seems to be some sort of issue with controlling them.

have you thought about a net or shocking the pond to do a survey?

Hi, no nothing on a survey yet, just starting to get involved with the pond management I guess. The crappie are easy to catch but who knows if you can catch them all. I just caught about 40 LMB from 9" to 14" long and transplanted them into my pond from my neighbors pond. They will have plenty of small sunfish type fish to eat, now I'm just wondering where my 100 6" c. cats are, I may have to make a trap and see if there are any left I guess.
Thx for the input guys!

PS if your in the COlumbia area it probably wont be a problem to fish it for crappie, let me know