BM and ML :

Good questions and posts in both cases.

I will address ML first. I think you are right on point and that approach will work for a crappie pond ( no pun intended \:D ). Most pond owners have one or sometimes two ponds only and the fisheries scientists I know don't recomend having a mix of fish in a small pond if one of the fish is crappie. To hard to manage and to easy for something to go wrong. The ponds (less than 80 acres) that I know of that have good crappie growth and fishing have just crappie and a strong #s predator base of HSB or LMB or both and sometimes CC also. The predators are many and overcrowded on purpose and there are no other sunfish( BG,RE) and no other substantial forage fish. Same approach as if you were trying to raise trophy BG in a LMB crowded pond only with a higher density predator base because of crappie reproductive rates. Most people who have one pond don't want to be limited to that option for obvious reasons.

BM the great crappie fishing in Miss. is not in small ponds. There are two sources of the good crappie fishing 1. the rivers and associated oxbows swamps etc. like the Miss. , Pearl , Tenn-Tom., Pascagoula and Yazoo river systems and large oxbow lakes like Eagle and others and 2. the flood control lakes (large lakes 10000+ acres) like Sardis ,Enid , Barnett, Arkabutla ,Grenada . All of these systems have lots of water that fluctuates (depth) a lot and it is flowing for much of the year so you get clean replinshing water. They all have lots of predators not just LMB and HSB but also gar, bowfin, big blue and flathead and channel cats ,peckrel etc.. Also the main forage base in these systems is not BG but is shad + BG + minnows + shiners + white bass + GSunfish etc. and you have carp, buff. and other rough fish. These systems are like the oceans with many and diverse fishes in a lot of water over a big area which all support each other and not at all like a monolithic small pond. That is why we have crappie and the others in our oxbow lakes but not in our ponds. I like crappie in the right place where they can grow and prosper as table fare but not where they x-out the BG, RE and LMB growth as well as there own. \:\) ewest

PS : there was a thread a few mths. ago that talked about non reproducing crappie and there status.