Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking Crawfish update

Last spring, my grandson and I caught somewhere around 1200+ baby crawfish in the bogs around the bottom land @ my place. Using a fine mesh fish net on the end of a 5' pole. Trapped in or around 4" of water in and amongst the flooded bog. These 1200 craws were in the 1/4" size with maybe 10 that were in the 2" size. At the time I had no idea of the type of crawfish were living in these bogs. Thinking these were native craws and thinking @ the time, was they would make a taste treat for my RES and CNBG. I had no lmb @ the time of the crawfish stocking. Since that time I have seen some of the crawfish have grown to approx. 5" and see them walking on the bottom of the pond along the or near the waters edge. I have decided these are Procambarus Clarkii or Red Swamp also known as Louisiana Crawfish. They do burrow along the waters edge but from what I can find out, is if water is constant level, the burrows will be shallow. The biggest problem I have seen with the burrows is, the Coons dig the burrows looking for an easy meal. And as I watch over the pond, I see a few 5" craws around and a few burrows, so I am pretty sure the CNBG and the RES put a hurt on those baby craws when they were first stocked. I now have Overtons legacy CBLMB and I am sure they will help to control excess crawfish in the pond. And I think these same crawfish would have come to the pond naturally, I just helped it along. So would I do it again, and I would. I don't think you can keep them out of a pond here in the E. Texas or N. Louisiana areas. And my thanks goes out to Mr. Bill Cody and Ewest for helping me through there posting here of crawfish and etc,etc .

Tracy

Sounds like a success story to me! Good deal...

TGW1 - Since the crayfish are established do you notice less FA and weed growth; or maybe little if any plant type growth in the forage pond? Since forage ponds are normally shallow they are prove to nuisance amounts of plant growth. Abundant numbers of crayfish will also increase the sediment/detritus turbidity in proportion to the number of crayfish per acre. Any notice of cloudy water in the forage pond? Cloudy water will reduce sunlight penetration and results in less plant growth.

All great questions. I am stocking several hundred PSC this spring for FA and muck control as well as for forage. If successful at getting the PSC established, I will post my observations as well.

Since my pond is close to Tracy's, I know that it will eventually hold crawfish. And, truth to tell, I'm glad to have more forage for the large BG and decent LMB.

My question is this: Is there a real difference between papershell CS and Red Swamp? I don't mind ordering the papershell if it is better for the fish and/or the dam, just wondering.

Tracy, my nephew and I used to catch small crawfish out of roadside ditches near Baton Rouge. We'd use them for bait on the flats on False River.

Anything would hit a small craw, but RES absolutely went crazy over them. I'm guessing the RES capacity to crush shells made crustaceans easier to eat than for other types of BG.

Also noticed that crawfish tended to be a big fish bait when it came to BG. Glass shrimp and crickets got even faster action, but were not so selective re size.

I have a big, big crawfish issue in my pond in Ky. I have 1 maybe 2 inch visibility. I have muck 4-6 inches deep all around the pond. How would you recommend getting rid of the crawfish if the pond is so muddy the LMB or RES can't see to eat them?

Bill Cody, I watched the crawfish denude any or all of the vegetation along one bank of the pond. Clean as can be. And as far a water clarity, I see no evidence of turbid water caused by the crawdads. I don't believe I have enough crawfish in the pond to cloudy the water. After adding all 1200+ of those little 1/4 " baby craws, I see just a few big ones around the pond. I do see skeletal remains of some along the shore. Eaten and enjoyed by others around the pond. Anthropic, when trying to identify these crawfish as native, I had to wait for them to grow to adult size and while doing so, I was reading all I could find on the crawdads in our area of E. Texas. I found out the Red Swamps have taken over this area of Texas and I am thinking if you add the paper shells, they will be killed or moved out by our native RSC. So I might be a waste of time and money stocking the PSC. But I am no expert like Bill Cody or Ewest. And to FortheFamily, everything I have read says the lmb will remove 98% of the craws in a pond. Here in Louisiana, they trap the craws for the food table so you might give that a try but again the stocking of lmb works best, this is based on all I have read and my experience is the 1200+ I added is down to maybe 50 or so holes around a 3.5 acre pond with only a few larger ones seen in or around the pond bottom.

PS, I started this thread so others might learn from what I am seeing.

Tracy

You could trap them and eat them. I personally do not care for seafood, but my wife does. Fresh crawdads to her taste similar to Lobster. They do to me also, but I don't like Lobster.

The crayfish sold in the grocery store that looks kind of nasty or crayfish on a food bar wife will not eat. She says tastes nasty.

But get some fresh ones, especially if they have been dining full feed on fish food, get a pot of boiling water, some crab/lobster boil seasoning mix, and dump the crays in boiling water.

Scuba diving club I belonged to for many years had an annual crawdad hunt. Would go to the lake and have a night snorkel/scuba dive and give prizes for "largest", "most", etc. Then right immediately after the hunt dump them all, big and small, in a big old cast iron pot of boiling water with some lobster spice in it. The crays would come out bright red looking like tiny lobsters. There were never any leftovers.

I know they eat them in the south regularly. But for the mid-west, it was kind of a novelty because crays are not raised commercially in our area. So the crawdad boil was more like a wild game feast with the wild game being local crawdads.

TGW1, the skeletal remains you see might be from them moulting and growing larger. Their exoskeleton doesn't stretch, so to get bigger they shed it. A young crawfish could moult almost once a month for their first year of life, then 3-5 times their 2nd and usually last year of life.

Bam! Delicious!

Those on the plate look very much like red swamp crayfish. Papershell crayfish do not get real large and are not very aggressive compared to some of the other common species, thus the papershell will likely get crowded out or "do" poorly with other pond dwelling crayfish present. The more aggressive, larger species will occupy the preferred habitat competing strongly with papershells. Survival of papershells in a pond will depend on who papershells have to compete with. IF the competing specie grows larger then generally the papershell will struggle to maintain a pond dwelling population.

esshup, There you go again. helping us (me) who never thought of them molting, and leaving their skeletal remains along the shore line. Yep, I have seen that, along with sometimes seeing just a big claw where I thought the birds or coons had a good meal. esshup thanks for expanding my small thinking.

Tracy

Just a claw probably DOES mean that a coon had a good meal!

Bill C or anyone else with experience with PSC,

I don't have any other crawfish in my puddle so I'm hoping the PSC will work for me. I'm also hoping their small size will keep them within the mouth gap of the YP, SMB and WE. I know PSC are known to burrow. How big a problem should I expect that to be? I'm ok with a smokestack here and there but don't want bank undercutting, etc.

I have papershells in my forage fish pond that has lots of discarded broken sidewalk cement pieces along most of the shoreline. I do not see any evidence of crayfish burrowing in the pond on the slopes except for the few Cambarus crayfish that invaded from the creek. I am pretty sure the abundant crayfish reside under the pieces of broken. When occasionally moving the cement pieces I see crayfish move out. This pond periodically gets drawn down 2-4 ft for various reasons so burrows / holes in the basin would be apparent. The Cambarus/Procambarus spp. move out of the pond and make burrows often the burrows have chimneys.

Tracy, or anybody else with crawfish,

One of my concerns in stocking crawfish is it might upset the pond balance. Specifically, in my situation, it will distract the predators from my SF forage and create potential over population issues there. Have you noticed that your predators are moving away from fish for dinner in favor of "lobster?" Just wondering whether we need to spend a little more time thinking about the impact on the pond balance before we stock additional forage for our predators. I am not a pro but it seems every change made to the pond community has impact, sometimes, despite our best intentions, with a downside.

I also have backed away from adding crawfish to my pond for fear of upsetting the balance.

Bill, the only downside I have seen is where the coons have dug into the crawfish holes along the bank when looking for a meal. It makes the crawfish holes much larger. In my researching, it told how the craws will borrow shallow when water levels remain fairly constant. And I am guessing it might make an easy meal for a determined coon. As far as offsetting any balance in my pond, I would say I have seen nothing to indicate an out of balance pond. I have or should have quite a few RES from my heavy stocking of them into the pond. And I know that RES love to eat small crawfish. In the first early spring I stocked a lot of very small craws and after that I would see them in the really shallow water and they would scoot into deeper as I walked the shore. I think that is where the lmb might take a meal. Also after stocking so many, I now see a few 5"ers, so I am guessing the pond has balanced. And Bill, you ever herd the saying "verity is the spice of life"?

Tracy

Thanks for the inputs guys!

My situation is this. The SMB, YP and couple LMB kept BG recruitment to little or none last summer. Pretty much all gone at less than 2 inch size. The 2 to 3 inch PS I stocked fall of 2014 did not spawn but I expect the survivors to be old/large enough to spawn this spring. No sign of YP spawn last spring either (mostly male stocked I think) but stocked 25 mostly 7 inch ones (mostly female I was told) last fall so hope to get a spawn from them this spring as well. In anticipation of adding the forage of new spawn PS and YP to the BG spawn this spring, I stocked 10 WE last fall as additional predators.

With that said, I only saw "OK" growth for the YP and SMB last summer. I know crawfish is a preferred forage for them and the WE so stocking craws should help with growth. From Tracy's input, it sounds like I could get an initial feeding frenzy if I stock the crawfish but that the population will reduce quickly. I also know that there are always traps if the SF start to over populate but I hate wasting fish by throwing them on the bank to die. I think I will stock the craws (PSC). Hopefully, they will help control the FA as well as improve the growth of my predators. So many interactions to consider!

Bill, here in Louisiana, I have learned they don't throw anything away or on the bank here. Everything is eatable here. They just give it a Cajun name and so you might never know what is in it. There is a name for fish soup but not sure what it is, just cook up some rice and blend it all together with some spice seasoning and some Louisiana Red Sauce.

Tracy

Tracy,
Sounds like a fish Court Boullion (Cajuns mis-pronounce it as couvillion). I'd eat that stuff with canned tuna fish in it......and, I don't even like canned tuna fish...
Charlie

My swag would be to add the crawfish to help the fish grow faster. I don't think that they will take away from your Sunfish predation issue. If the predatory fish are not growing that fast (hood RW) then I don't think having more food for them will be bad - including YOY sunfish.

Look at it from an engineering/math standpoint. How many predators do you have in there? How much weight do you expect them to put on this coming year? How many pounds of YOY fish will that take? Will there be enough YOY fish??

There obviously wasn't enough for them in 2015.

Once you do that drill, then make a decision on the crawfish.

I like the math approach.

Using the numbers for desired yearly growth of 1 pound growth for SMB and LMB, 6 oz growth for YP and 8 oz for WE and assuming 8 pounds of forage per pound of growth, I need 450 pounds of YOY SF. I don't know if these number assumptions are realistic so if somebody has better ones I would like to hear them.

If the numbers are close, I am way short on forage, especially since a very large percentage of my YOY are consumed by YP when they are around the 1 inch size, or smaller, so they don't weigh very much! Even if the PS spawn, it won't help that much. I will definitely stock the craws. I'm also hoping to get some other forage going like, scuds, grass shrimp and a hearty minnow species.

What do you guys think about this idea? My BG population seems to be heavily skewed towards males. I say this because a good 80% of the nests built during spawn end up uninhabited. How about I stock a few adult female BG (maybe 5 to 10)?

I'd give some thought to stocking feed trained YP and getting a good feeding program going. My concern with BG is them getting ahead of the predators if you are wanting to keep it a more SMB/WE pond vs a LMB pond.

If that's not the case, then stock the female BG.

I think you are even lighter on forage fish than you think in your YOY poundage requirements. Remember, the fish have to be of the optimal size to minimize caloric exchange. (expend as much energy as that mouthful of food provides)