Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations stocking crappie

I love catching Crappie, prob 2nd or 3rd Fav fish but I haven't yet seen a pond (larger then maybe an arce) able to keep balance with them in it. I always see 1 of 2 things happen, they overpopulated, get stunted and near destroy all other populations of species or they are so few that you may get lucky and catch 1 or 2 in a years time.

With a really small pond I would think they could be easily managed though, just either have to eat a lot of them or if your too weak hearted to throw them on the bank (like me :P ) dump them in a river (long as its a native fish to the river). Edit: most places its Illegal to stock fish in public water without permits so make sure about the laws before doing that.


I do have a good example there was a pond up the road (maybe close to an acre) that use to have a slight balance of Crappie, BG and LMB. People would target the BG and Crappie, the bass and Bg were Decent size and bass numbers were also decent, Crappie size and numbers seemed Balanced, weren't huge Crappie but a lot of good size ones, you'd catch a mix of each species in a fishing outage. Edit and note: to me it seemed fairly balanced, I'm mostly guessing cause this was years ago, right now the pond has been over fished and is in bad condition..