Pond Boss Forums FISH & FISHING Sunfish-Including Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass Black Crappie from 3.5" to 13" in 23 months

Put in on April 12th 2013 right at 3.5" (pic included).
Caught a few 9.5" on March 15th 2014 (pic included).
Caught a few 10.5+" on 10-18-14 that hit the scale right at 1#. (pic included)
Caught 3 right at 13" on 3-7-15 that hit the scales at 1.3 to 1.4# (pic Included)







Below are some links to previous thread talking about stocking , forage and pond information.

!st year update with stocking info

Deep Water Willow Structure

Channal Cats for Predators

Black Crappie Delivered

BG Bedding and Well Output

Forage / Silt Pond w Gams

BCP from 3.5" to 1# in 18 months

Heckuva difference. well done!

Looks like they are really gaining in height and thickness now

Those first stockers seem to do quite well. The challenge is continuing it with subsequent generations and the challenges of boom bust crappie spawning.

Mine went from 4-41/2" to 8-12" in one year, is that good?

Awesome fish Tums! Congrat's

Thanks Dave and MNFish.

Snake they are lots of Gams swimming around so I hope they will maintain that growth for a while to come.

CJSB2003 Yes and I was surprised not to find any eggs in these. Just goes to show how unpredictable they can be. I am hoping my Catch and keep pressure fishing and a few thousand predators will keep them under control when they do have a hatch.

Pat as long as the fish look healthy you are doing good. The biggest concern with BCP is them not having enough food to feed their numbers and getting stunted.

Tums
Haven't started to keep any till they get off a spawn but then it's release to the grease!

I have heard that some have been able to pellet train. Has anyone ever heard of this?

Tums, are your BCP feeding mostly on GAMS? what other forage do they have to feed on? I have an over population of GAMS and thought about BCP once but wasnt sure if they will be effective controlling them.

I can't keep gams very long. Bucket bass fry keep them thinned out along with everything else. See a few around so maybee they will catch up till the bass spawn again.havent noticed the BCP hitting them but I'm sure they would if they got in front of the BCP

I dont have any predators that reproduce , thus no fingerling or baby predators to hammer on them each season. I feel the GAMS are hammering the fry and eggs of my GSH , sorry for the hijack.

I have thought about BCP, Ill come up with something....

Back to BCP growth rates .....

Bobby I have BCP and can't wait till they spawn for the first time so we can start gobbling some. They do eat a lot... Like bass do.
They grow fast if givin the grub they require


Pat

I doubt crappies would feed on gams much during the warm months. Now in the winter when gams are forced deep, I bet they get hammered hard. Bobby, needlefish are going to be your best bet. I collected a couple dozen last late spring. They were 10-12" by fall until the cold killed them.

Do crappie only eat forage fish? Will they go on feed? .....Never heard anybody mention it before.

Fish and chips
They are forage eating critters. Have heard of a few on the forum that feed trained a few crappie but not many

Seems like so many people want crappie for a small pond that someone would take advantage of it and sell feed trained crappie. Wouldn't that make it more do-able for keeping them from being stunted in the long run?

I hear they just don't want to play well with others or eat pellets. Cost prohibitive



Pat

One, they are VERY hard to pellet train. High percentage will be lost to starvation in the process. Two, once they spawn all subsequent generations born in the pond will not be pellet trained as unlike BG, it's extremely rare for crappie to self train in a pond environment if not pellet trained from a small size...

I like single sex. Crappies are easy to sex during the spawn. I collect females as they tend to get bigger. On a good day you could easily get a couple dozen females. If you do that 3-4 times each year, you can easily add 50-75 female only to your pond. The key is having a good source pond to collect from.

Bobby I seen BCP feeding on gams year round in my pond (I have very little shallow cover for gams). However when the fry of other fish hatch out they will also pounce on them and concentrate less on the gams. I have also watched them eat small BG.

As far as feed training some of my BCP do feed on pellets. I guess they learned from the other pellet killers. I would say it is only a very small percentage (in the single digits) that acquired a taste for pellet feeding at the surface. It is very hard to notice when they do as they do not feed like other top feeders for me. They just ease up really easy and grab the pellet and slip down with out making much of a disturbance in the water (compared to a BG or CC feeding).