Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking crappie control

our pond is 1.5 acres, recently added aeration professionally installed. Pond is about 7yrs old(rebuild busted dam) and was stocked with large mouth , blue gill, channel cats, shell cracker and a few grass carp. Chain pickerel are in there naturally as well. Also an otter or 2 regularly show up. I want to put crappie in there but i keep reading that they will out compete the bass because large mouth arent aggressive enough, but what I havent seen is any mention of the pickerel. We joke and call them "fresh water barracuda". I also love pan fried crappie. Will the barracuda, otter, and myself be enough to manage crappie in this pond? btw.... I am also putting out about a 40lb bag per month of "floating catfish food" from 2 different piers. Pond is spring fed and the water has never stopped flowing out the overflow pipe.

B C. welcome to the Pond Boss Forum. Lots of information here and I would suggest spending some time looking through some of the older threads and archives for a lot of the answers to your questions. I am no expert and one should be around to help you out but my first concern in your pond would be the otters. The otter has harmed many a pond by removing most ALL of the fish and leaving you with little to nothing swimming in the pond. Be on guard when it comes to these fish eating animals.

Welcome to PB. Crappie are the first to spawn and the babies are there to mop up on all the other young of the year. Having a hinged jaw, like a bass, they prey on everything. The bottom line is that crappies should never be stocked in a pond less than 25 acres. Some say 50 acres. They easily become the dominant species. Lusk once wrote about a private club lake with 4 inch crappie that were 4 to 5 years old.

If I remember correctly yellow perch spawn before the black or white crappie.

DO NOT PUT CRAPPIE IN A POND THAT SMALL. RESIST THE TEMPTATION. YOU WILL QUICKLY COME TO REGRET THAT DECISION. BM61.

how about those hybrid crappie? the ones that have 90% male offspring?

NO CRAPPIE. NO OTTERS. I have seen crappie dominate a small pond, with nothing more than 4". Crappie should only be in large rivers and lakes of 100 acres or more.


One or two otters in my ponds this winter wiped out about 90 channel catfish weighing probably 200 pounds total. Never could catch them in the act, but saw the catfish heads and other otter sign.

More info...There was an article in PBM last year about success with BCP in small BOWs. IIRC the "magic formula" used HSB as the predator.

Relative's pond is 1.5 acre and had crappie when they bought the property. It is predator heavy and I have not seen a successful spawn in the last 5-6 years...Pond has LMB, large channel cats in good numbers.

Could be just luck and crappie haven't had success or the large predator ratio controls them....maybe a bit of both?

All experts say given the choice, do not stock them in small ponds/lakes.

I had thought about adding some hybrid crappie to my mix as I am very predator heavy but sourcing those look like a challenge from Ohio...

I asked the lady at the Fish Wagon about the HSB and she snickered at me saying that they were only for large lakes ? After rummaging around on this site I've seen some mention of smaller ponds keeping them.

HSB are my favorite fresh water fish to catch, grow fast on pellets and fight harder than any other fish. Easy to manage #'s as they don't reproduce and my favorite fish to watch feed....

Black Creek - As often the people on fish wagons are not very knowledgeable or not real truthful about good information about some fish species including those they are selling. HSB will survive and grow very well in small ponds 0.2 ac and larger. All they need is adequate food either as pellets and/or small fish. Definitely not just for large lakes. The fish wagon was likely selling crappie which the statement of "for large lakes" is more appropriate for crappie than HSB. Although when managed correctly crappie especially hybrid crappie can thrive in ponds. Numerous members here have proven and disproved it.

Take a look at the picture in this post in the thread linked below. I don't remember specifically what the size of TJ's pond is that I caught this HSB, but best I can remember it seemed around two acres.

Wife and I visit TJ's and he lets us catch one of his monster HSB and SMB

I know a lot of small ponds that have crappie. One of them we stocked via buckets 15 years ago. For the first few years th crappie fishing was great. My wife and I were dating at th time and she caught a 10”+ crappie 27 straight casts. Now they are all 4-6” and they took out 200 last year and I bet that barely put a dent in them.

When I was picking up my fish I asked th gentleman what do do about a crappie overabundance problem in my buddy’s 2 acre pond. He recommended a few 8-10” walleye and said that is the way he has resolved the problems in this area. I asked about HSB and he said at least around here he hasn’t seen HSB solves the problem.

If you don't want to poison the pond, two or three 15 pound plus flathead catfish will wipe out the crappie and most everything else.

I have fishing access to four 1-3 acre ponds with nice crappie populations, and know of three others. About 25 years ago we discovered WCP had invaded my FIL's 3 acre pond and it was thick with 5" fish. It was easy to catch a 5 gallon bucketful by just dangling a jig over the side of the boat. No reeling, just yank them in the boat. Talked people into releasing all the bass.

The next year (or the second year(?)) the crappie ran ~7" inches and we ate a lot. For the past 20 years its been a nice 10" crappie fishery. We still rarely keep a bass.

I'd say if someone wants crappie, put them in. Read up on the current management techniques to maintain it.

Per Cody, Hybrid Crappie - HBCP are certainly an option given thoughtful management - from February alone:



16"


17"


18"


...you get the picture. These fish are from a 2 ac pond - HBCP average 14". HBCP can serve as a great bonus fish with little impact on fishery provided one understands the management strategies to employ.

Nice fish! Well done.hope my BCP will reach that level someday.

TJ, great looking fish!

We are catching 13 and 14 inch Crappie and they are delicious. With the new setup on the fishing boat, we should be able to catch a bunch!

I'm obviously in the minority on this site but I've proven in my pond that if you manage them correctly BCP can be a fine fish in smaller waters....I'd be a little more leery with a pond that small, but in my large pond (6.5 acres) I'm 10 years in and everything is perfect. We've already taken out almost 100 BCP this year, all of them in the 11-15" range and thick as can be. This has been the norm for this pond it's whole life.

Our trick is similar to others here, keep both the predators (LMB and HSB) and the food source (BG) heavy. We rarely take out any of either, with our primary focus being on the BCP.

To date we've taken over 2000 BCP out, every single one over 10". I keep track of every fish removed, their size and RWE.

Great feedback DL - our takeaway here is intensive and thoughtful management strategies have a huge impact on the development of a fishery...you are proof positive even dealing with pure BCP genetics that counter intuitive goals can be achieved. 2000 BCP over 10" is an amazing accomplishment...not much better fillet for dripping in beer batter and dropping into the peanut oil....maybe YP?

Thanks TJ....I'm not saying that anything like what we've done could be accomplished with a 'leave it alone' mentality - I think our success is primarily based on our focused fishing goals....I'm right now in the 400 +- range for BCP removal annually. I adjust that based on catch, RWE and male/female ratio. A pond like mine would fail miserably if not managed, I believe.

Boy I hope YP are better than BCP! My small pond will hopefully be producing some eating size YPs this year! And if they're better than BCP I'll be a happy boy, because BCP is phenomenal!

I guess I’m in the same boat you are..... I’m in the fourth year and the crappie are 8-11” ( 1st spawn)

You hit on the other take home from these posts - a BCP fishery that remains un-managed will likely fall into imbalance per traditional wisdom...proven many times through science.

Beast - if you're trying source HBCP contact Rex Rains [Rainman] - he is my primary source and a great guy, besides. Feel free to ping me anytime for my experiences managing HBCP in my fisheries. Happy to help you any way I can...might be a good candidate for you.

TJ

TJ, tell us more please! Size stocked, numbers, forage and predators in the pond, reproduction etc.

I think crappie have more fans than was thought

I actually dislike the taste of most fish, but Yellow Perch and Walleye make my mouth water at the very thought of eating them!!! Both are fish that can be grown in far warmer and more southern latitude ponds than most may think.....I've stocked many ponds that prove it...

Walleye is excellent, but I don't care for yellow perch. Too fishy.

BG from clean, cool water tastes much better than crappie, in my opinion. Smaller bass are actually very good, as well. Steamed scaled whole 10 to 14 inch LMB with ginger & garlic, served with good soy sauce, is delicious.

I'm hoping the lmb, we, and hsb I added last fall can help keep my bcp in check - when my pond held a large and stunted population of lmb the bcp averaged 10-14" and BG were healthy as well.

there's some great info in this thread guys, thanks for sharing!

Matt how long did it take for the BCP to get to 10-14”?

Pat I'm not sure....after being here two years my bcp have gone from nothing larger than 6", to nothing larger than 9". I'm hoping they get thinned out back into that healthy keeper range in the next few years now that the predator balance is back in play.

Before I moved here and started managing the pond for the hoa there was a great 10 year run of excellent crappie fishing - then one of the hoa members started keeping every bass they caught from the pond sending all other species into a terrible spiral.

Bingo! I remember as a kid in the 70's you kept bass and ate them. Probably the demise of many a pond. White crappie seem to get into nearly every pond like bullheads and GSF via high rainfall events, at least in our area. My neighbors have a couple of ponds above my new pond that reportedly have WCP, so I expect to have to manage for them - perhaps proactively stocking BCP.

The darn cormorants seem to be controlling the fish population at the moment , there was at least 10 this morning..... ugh

Pat, is there no way to “talk” the water turkeys into leaving?

Dave there is ..... he he he.....
I “talk to them daily and a few have listened “

I have "heard" that they can be reasoned with.

Watched one gulp down a crappie that was8” ..... they sneak in and gobble and go.....

This one was both unreasonable and stupid. Beaver was laughing last I heard.