Hi, and thanks for the replies thus far. We live and the pond is located in Northeast Ohio. A few points...
Yes, as I said I've done a lot of reading last year on pond management and know that stocking crappies (and yellow perch) can pose a problem.
However, as I said this pond is thick with bass under 12". I did extensive fishing using many different methods and could not produce a bass over 12". I also caught a few (read less than 5) big crappies and no smaller ones. Big bluegills are easy to catch and a small one is the exception. A couple of perch were caught and these were good sized too, with no smaller ones.
Anyway, being that the pond looks to be suffering from a real lack of forage fish, I thought I'd lean to the side of those who say you can put crappie and yellow perch in "smaller" ponds like this. I'm hedging my bets that the bass will at least help to keep them under control for a while, and at the same time fatten themselves up real quick on this "new" source of foorage. A few friends and I do a lot of "catch and keep" fishing and so I'm also betting that we can control the perch and crappie if they start to get stunted. I've also read that crappie tend to overpopulate in ponds with too much cover and/or weed growth where they can escape bass predation. Since this pond has little structure and we've got the weeds under control this should help.
I believe this pond was a victim of not enough people keeping bass. So, I plan to remove another 50 to 100 bass this spring (depending on how numerous they seem to be) and try to get those left fat and growing. Once they show signs of full bellies and increased growth I'll change to a slot limit of some kind to maintain a good balance of bass. Any suggestions?
I know that bluegill should be present at about 500 per acre, and being that there were already a good number of big bluegill present I figured that nature would take it's course if I cut down on the bass numbers. This, combined with the perch and crappie numbers being increased via the stockings we did, is what I'm hoping will get the forage base energized.
We put in 3200 fathead minnows. I know...many people say they will disappear in time, but I figured it can't hurt and who knows. My final strategy was to sink brushy cover for the minnows and younger fish. I still feel the pond needs more brushy cover, and plan to add a bit more this spring if I can talk my friend into letting me. Does anybody have any formula for number of Christmas trees per pile and how many brush piles per acre?
What I'm mainly looking for is advice on other potential forage species. I don't like the idea of putting shad in there but I've read mixed reviews on shiners and am wondering if this is an option. I also plan to dump a bunch of crayfish in this spring since they appear to be absent in the pond due to the high bass numbers.
