Saint, so you might be able to have cake and eat it to.
To be successful you want to harvest the flathead so that the requirements for growth and maintenance do not breach the BOWs potential production. Actually, it should be below this in order to allow you to harvest some crappie. Ideally the weight at which they are harvested will correspond to multiple of 100 times the weight of crappie you want the FH to crop. For example, if you want FH to do the cropping up to 8" length for the crappie (.25 lbs) then you should crop the Flathead before or around 25 lbs in weight (38 inches). For a 6" length of crappie it would be FH of 10 lbs(28 inches).
If FH are unable to reproduce in the BOW then you can make fairly reliable estimates of how much the FH weigh and will gain. If you fish for them and fin clip so that you may identify individuals ... then you can gain keen insight by tracking their progress. Combined with your crappie creel you can establish understanding of your BOW's production capabilities and be able to fine tune your management of predators. There should be an additional prey species that is not inclined to eat crappie or compete with the crappie without providing substantial crappie forage. Its presence will feed crappie and take some predation off the crappie, GSH might be a good choice or perhaps TP if they are legal in your state.
If the FH reproduce then your only recourse is to monitor the crappie. Harvest any FH that exceeds 100 times the weight of the largest crappie you want to be cropped by flat head. If you don't get good crappie recruitment above this weight of crappie, then you might need to reduce some FH below that target weight. To be a good crappie BOW, they need to pull off some good spawns and hopefully this occurs on a yearly basis.
It still seems quite a challenge to source the Flathead if they don't reproduce. On the other hand, if they do reproduce they might very quickly attain too high a biomass. The best situation would be where you can ladder stock flathead ideally from a reputable aquaculturist and the flathead fail to recruit. Under this scenario you would have a great handle of the FH biomass and size structure.
Last edited by jpsdad; 08/23/19 04:17 PM.
