Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Hybrid Bass to control Black crappie?

I have a 3/4 acre pond that is 12’ deep (average probably 7’). In December 300 coppernose bluegill, 100 red ear sunfish, and 15 lbs of fathead minnows were put in. My plan is to add 30-40 4” Black crappie soon and hybrid bass in the fall. Not trying to debate whether black crappie should be in a small pond or not, but rather how many hybrid striped bass to put in to hopefully grow a few bigger bluegill and crappies. I was thinking 20 this year and a few the next few years till I reach 35. Thoughts? Y’all

Should have mentioned that I feed pellets.

I'm planning on trying Hybrid Crappie.Have you looked at them?

Hybrid crappie would be less of a risk to overpopulate but they do reproduce just not in as high of numbers.

HSB eat pellets well, even to the point of obesity. You want the HSB to pressure the crappie and not rely heavily on pellets. You do want the BG to eat pellets. What size HSB are you going to add. You need them big enough to hammer any Crappie offspring.

How many HSB stocked to control Black Crappie? Considering BC produce about a half million eggs per female and when conditions are right, nearly all hatch, I'd guess about 1000 HSB per pound of BC females......

I did this for my larger pond about 5 years ago....6.5 acres, average depth of around 14'.

So far so good....exactly zero issue with overpopulation of the BC, every one we catch are fat and sassy with nary a one stunted one caught yet. And the HSB are a bonus fish....they fight like crazy when hooked. But we try to avoid hooking them at all....I like them in there for population control.

I've ladder stocked them twice, 200 each time. I expected some attrition as there are LMB in there big enough to eat them but I know that many of each age class survived as we've caught from both.

There is a big difference in a pond with LMB as an apex predator and one with that spot relegated to HSB. With both you will have a better chance of controlling Crappie overpopulation and BG stunting.

Per this article key factors in a successful pond with crappie is the water clarity needs to be 24" the majority of the time so the bass can see to eat crappie, the pond needs to have rooted underwater plants so young bass can escape the crappie, and some sort of slot limit on bass:

https://mdc.mo.gov/property/pond-stream-care/ponds-fish-frog-management/crappie-small-ponds

Nice article. If you read it carefully then you will notice all the requirements (necessary items/events) noted by the authors. While correct and possible all the requirements noted sure tell you that doing this successfully over time is like balancing on the edge of a razor blade. This article is a nice way of explaining what many other State Agency Pond Mgt books put more bluntly - crappie are not recommended for small waters.

Newer reports of pond success with crappie exist - just a different approach. See this from a prior 2015 thread.

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92447#Post92447 Crappie archive – a lot there


Very hard to have a good pond/lake (under 40 acres) with crappie (black , white or hybrids) as they all overpopulate in time. There is a method but it does not involve LMB and BG. There are exceptions to everything and some ponds do have crappie that seem to do ok with LMB and BG. Problem is we can't so far tell what it is about those ponds that make them work. Here is the archive link on crappie and an excerpt on the plan that seems to be working.

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92447#Post92447

From one of the linked threads on Crappie. Now several yeas old. BC= black crappie in this post. Jeff now works with Shawn Banks.

Southeastern Pond Management reports in its client newsletter ( see link to newsletter
http://www.sepond.com/images/news/FishTales/sepondfall07.pdf ) excellent success (so far) with Crappie in Southern ponds. This is the same company that one of our PB Convention speakers (Dr. Jeff Slipke) works for. He also provided the PB Forum through Dave Willis info on SMB in Southern ponds. The newsletter contains an article on that as well.

Back to the article on Crappie. With research from reservoirs on HSB feeding they found what we know that the HSB ate a lot of TShad. They also found that HSB eat a lot of young crappie. With that info they decided to try that application on some test ponds. They started with a clean pond and added TShad , GShiners and FH in the fall. The next spring they stocked BC fingerlings followed by HSB in the fall. Over the next 4 years they saw fast growth among the crappie with little crappie recruitment. No sign of the usual problems with crappie in ponds. They then created more ponds like the first and report that electrofishing results are very promising - slab crappie with no overpopulation and - yes the HSB are doing well. A pic of one of the HSB appears to be about 8 lbs. A pic of one of the crappie looks to be about 1.5 to 2 lbs.

Update - additional info on this idea -

North American Journal of Fisheries Management
Fish Community Response to Hybrid Striped Bass Introduction in Small Warmwater Impoundments
J. Wesley Neal*, Richard L. Noble, and James A. Rice


Results from this study suggest hybrid striped bass may have consumed enough small black crappies to prevent overpopulation without eliminating recruitment. However, further study is warranted using a larger number of ponds and differing conditions. If these results can be replicated, enhancing crappie fisheries while simultaneously creating a hybrid striped bass fisheries would be a favorable alternative to complete pond reclamation.