Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Beavers affect on crappie population

Bought a farm in late March that has a 1 3/4 acre pond and a smaller 1/3 acre pond.

Pond was infested with beavers when I bought it and I assume it had them for at least 2 years as I trapped out 2 large mature beavers and 3 smaller 2 yo beavers over first couple weeks.

The beavers had dammed up the output of the pond and caused the water to rise about 1.5' over the banks. After removing the beavers and opening back up the outflow waters levels dropped back to normal. Caught lots of crappie in April and beginning of May in the 7"- 8" size (none bigger). Towards end of May noticed average size of fish was getting bigger. Bite has been slow last few weeks but the crappie I have caught show even larger size averaging 9"-10".

Pond is 14' deep toward dam and averages 9' deep for most of pond - shallow end is closer to 6'. Edges of pond shallower that 5' are full of small lillypads.

Bass have been small on average (9" to 12") though I have caught one large 4.5-5lb bass and had a couple other fish break off. Total absense of 1.5 to 3lb bass.

It seems a bit miraculous that the crappie are growing so fast now - I'm speculating that the beaver activity may have screwed up the last few years of crappie spawns (and stunted the bass and crappie) and that the crappie are now growing because they are eating their own fry. I see what appear to be large schools of small fish on my fishfinder in the deeper areas of the pond - appear to be thousands and thousands of small fish schooling in deep water. Or perhaps just better water clarity is allowing the predators to target small fish better. Clarity ranges between 18" and 2.5' depending on how much rain has fallen. Have noticed the bass bite best when water is clearer.

Update: Caught another 20 crappies when I targetted them last week. This batch averaged about 9" long but nice and fat.

Tried using Berklely GULP 2.5" minnows on jigheads and the fish attacked them like live minnows. Got 10 times as many hits on them over the crappie jigs. The bluegills also loved them.

The GULP minnows also snagged a couple more nice white perch - so far I have pulled 3 out of the pound - all about 10" long and fat.