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Building a new lake for recreational fishing and some tasty eating, I tried the search bar but could not find anything on the topic, I love to fish and eat crappie but am wondering what is the difference in white or black crappie and which is preferable, I hear white crappie are much more prolific in reproduction, true? also what is a good mix and quantity of fish to stock in a 17 acre lake with tons of cover, several acres of 25 to 30 ft of water depths? the pond is just starting to fill up, have probably got about an acre of water and up to 8 ft deep presently, am planning on introducing a bunch of fhm in the near future. Thanks in advance


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With crappie I think golden shiners would also be as good or better forage especially long term compared to FHM. Diversity of forage species is a key feature to a successful fishery. If I had a large habitat rich pond I would do my best to experiment with using the red shiner aka red horse minnow that is common in the central US. A few places will sell them one is:
http://armsfishfarm.com/typesoffish
Discussion about red shiners
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=391776&page=1

Also if I had a larger pond I would seriously consider building a small shallow seine-able forage pond (0.1-0.3 acre) to provide a constant good source of vauable forage. Good forage fish always seem to be in short supply for most all predator rich ponds.

Be aware that if the current "tons of cover" consists mostly of finely divided cover in your new pond is composed of trees,,, the dense twigs will relatively quickly decompose as in 2-4yrs. Coarse woody cover of larger limbs are not very good as shallow habitat for small fish esp long term minnow populations. Coarse weed beds function best as minnow habitat.

To answer most of your crappie questions, I suggest you get the current issue of In-Fisherman magazine Mar-Apr 2019 Vol 44 No1, where it has an article by Cory Schmidt “Crappie Behavior Isn’t Always Black & White”. It has some pretty good information about crappie and the differences between black and white crappie. The article was good enough that I underlined numerous parts.

Also shift through the numerous threads about growing crappie in ponds, although your 17 acres almost qualifies as a small lake.
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92447#Post92447

The questions that are not answered with the above information do come back to this thread and post your questions.

Last edited by Bill Cody; 03/05/19 09:16 PM.

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Thank you for the input, lots of useful info and links, I will definitely check them out, especially the the use of red and gold shiners as forage. my cover I was speaking of entails a ton of trees, tops and standing timber, which I know will deteriorate over time, but also a ton of stumps, standing and uprooted, ( the whole area was a white oak woods when I started) and also a couple big truck loads of pvc pipe chunks and fittings from a local pipe supply company. the back end has some shallower areas that are full of smaller trees and stumps, (areas that I didnt need as a borrow area for dirt) I just cut the logs and firewood out and left the stumps and brush, being shallow, I figure it will weed over in time, to sort of make up for deterioration of small brush.
As for a nurse pond, that might be a route to look at, I have ample room to do something like that, how does that work? just use it for raising bait fish, then release them into the big pond at certain times?, I could even do that at an elevation above the main lake and then drain it into the main lake when I need to.


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Bill - You may recall that I recently built a 1/2 acre pond and put in FHM and LCS. These were meant to feed black crappie that I would add later to feed the apex predato,r blue catfish, added even later. My neighbor assures me he will remove any unwanted black crappie. What are your thoughts of adding GSH (next) to the mix. If they are likely to benefit the mix, is there any reason to wait until the LCS have begun to produce young?

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GSH are predatory in that they eat eggs and fry etc.. They will work for crappie but a shad type would be better IMO. However you are to far north for TFS and GSD get to big. Another more northern shad/minnow type might work.
















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Almost every small fish will eat fish eggs and/or fry. Normally if it's alive, wiggling, or recognized as food and it fits in the mouth of any fish, it will get eaten.
As far as I know there aren't many or any shad type options for fish in Missouri except the threadfin or gizzard which are not well suited for this application. The other hurdle is locating the 'stocker' species for sale. If you are really serious about benefiting the crappie(blk/wht) population once it is established then consider annually evaluating the pond's shiner and crappie population and when needed supplement the shiner numbers by adding the GSH fry package from some minnow farm such as: http://www.andersonminnows.com/GoldenShinerFry.php
You can buy them or raise your own in a separate forage pond. Release the new forage in the shallowest best minnow type habitat available in the receiving pond; often this is a wetland type area. If you are interested in collecting native fish that could be candidates as forage species see this book or one similar to it.
https://www.amazon.com/Fishes-Missouri-William-L-Pflieger/dp/1887247114

https://www.amazon.com/Fishes-Arkansas-H...f61-402d-11e9-b

The idea of building the forage pond with a drain at higher elevation is a very good plan so draining the forage pond water into the main pond is the easiest and simplest way to harvest or utilize the forage fish. Several forum members have used this excellent pond management option to supplement forage fish.


For best success for crappie, one of the main things you will have to do is learn how to best annually assess or evaluate the 'health', numbers, or density of both the shiners/forage community and crappie population. For the crappie this will be determining the general body condition(RW) and status of each size class.

Last edited by Bill Cody; 03/06/19 11:35 AM.

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Thanks again for the info and websites, I ordered two boxes of the shiner fry and will release them into the water thats already collected and let them grow for a yr before doing any additional stocking, it will probably take a couple yrs before the lake reaches full pool anyways.


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Originally Posted By: gehajake
let them grow for a yr before doing any additional stocking,


With that large of a lake you probably have a large watershed. Are there any other ponds in that watershed? If so there is a good chance your new lake will get infected this spring with various species of fish- some you may not want to let have a full year's head start before you stock. I'd talk to a MO fisheries biologist - they are happy to give you an opinion.


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Other than a few small puddles there is only one significant pond above this one in the watershed, and its not very far upstream. I hadnt thought of that, I have about 120A of watershed draining into this lake.
Is there any simple way of straining or slowing the contamination of fish from another BOW? what if a person built a pretty good sized brush pile dam toward the top end and let the incoming water filter through it slowly. at least the water coming in through that branch, Ive got several different inlet branches.

Last edited by gehajake; 03/08/19 04:24 PM.

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