Theo,
How would you know in time whether it was a good year or poor year for crappie spawn? By the time you are over-run with crappie, its probably too late to do any sigificant compensation via feeding variation on HSB.
There is some interesting data summarized on the Arkansas Pond Stockers web site regarding the variability of the spawn...showing one year almost no spawn and the very next year 40,000 for black crappie. Of course, they are touting their hybrid crappie as a solution....the data is at:
http://www.arkansaspondstockers.com/index_files/page0026.htm The other side of the equation, as relates to HSB, is that if its a poor year, i.e. no crappie spawn, the HSB still need to eat and they are voracious feeders. If you don't care about other fish in the pond, e.g. LMB or forage for LMB, then it probably doesn't matter, but if you are after a diverse pond, be careful about unanticipated impacts to other fish. I'm still toying with the thought of giving it (a crappie pond) a try, but everytime I go through the logic, it comes out the same...just isn't practical for me.
