Tracy, I remember Lusk talking about a 60 or so acre private lake in NE Texas. Bass were all but nonexistent but it was loaded with small crappie. Bob did a shock job and found 4 inch crappie that were 7 years old. The owners didn't want to nuke it so they added HSB to bring it back into balance. Or so my memory of the story goes.
Sooner or later the bigger bass die and you're left with a mess with crappie. However, for a time it might just work.
Dave:
Lets think this through for a minute. O.K. He stocks crappies in the pond, wanting to get them to stunt (so to speak) to be of the size for the LMB to eat, and for them to control the LMB YOY in subsequent years. What are the stocking numbers that he should stock, and how many years will it take for them to populate enough to get them to stunt?
What size do the crappie have to be to avoid predation at time of stocking? Are they available, and at what price?
If there's enough crappie in there to stunt, and eat the LMB YOY, will there be any other fish species that survive their first year of life to grow large enough to be of the correct size for the LMB to continue to grow at the rate needed to reach trophy status before they (the LMB) die of old age? Will enough of the forage fish (quantity wise) survive for that?
Then, like you said, how do you keep a standing crop of "soon to be trophy" LMB waiting in the wings (so to speak) for when this current crop starts to die of old age? Will there be enough forage fish in the pond, of the correct size, to get them there? Or will not enough YOY fish survive to grow to 2-3 year old fish to be large enough to be food for the trophy LMB?
Then what happens if the crappie fail to pull off a spawn that year?
