Crappies are a nightmare to manage. I know of just a handful of ponds that have had long term success in producing quality sized crappie. IMO, quality sized crappie are fish 12"+. I'd say 10" fish are good angling and 8" fish you start getting good eating... IME, many small ponds fail to have a naturally reproducing crappie population. Small, is less than 2 acres. Crappies as has already been mentioned are early spawners. In smaller ponds, the time of year they are spawning is very volatile. One day it's 70 degrees and the next it's 35, that's the nature of late winter, early spring spawning... In a larger BOW, the larger volume of water can handle these wide temperature swings better. In a smaller pond, not so much and this is IMO what leads to little or no successful spawning. The water temps swing too much and the eggs fail to survive. It's in these smaller ponds where crappies couldn't reproduce that I saw some HUGE crappies grown. My biggest crappie I've ever caught came out of a 3/4 acre pond and was just a hair over 3 pounds. The crappies in there never reproduced.
You may have heard others mention "magnolia crappies". In case you're wondering what the heck they are, it's just a fancy name for hybrid crappies. white crappie X black crappie They are fairly new to the hatchery world and private pond industry. Hybrids do occasionally occur in the wild where both species occur together. Cecil Baird(fish taxidermist extraordinaire!) says that some of his biggest crappies he's seen have most likely been hybrids. Magnolia crappies are not sterile and reproduce, but it is thought the offspring they produce are inferior and easily preyed upon. So the thought is, other predators in the pond will eat them all. You simply restock new Magnolias every year or two to keep their numbers up. This may be an alternative to consider if you absolutely must have crappies in your pond.
If you don't want hybrids my next best advice is to wait for the pond to really get established. In this I mean wait 3 or 4 years to stock the crappies. This will allow the HSB, WE and if you go with SMB them as well to get larger and be biggest enough to effectively prey on young crappies that are produced.
Most of the successful crappies ponds have large numbers of smaller very hungry LMB to prey on the YOY crappies. The few crappies that don't get eaten by the LMB, do better and reach decent sizes. Make sure if you do stock crappies, they are black crappies. White crappies have an even higher fecundity than black crappies and are more piscavorous. Black crappies can do well on mostly a invertebrate diet, while white crappies like fish.
I would really make room in the budget to feed. It really makes a huge difference in the quality of a fishery, especially in smaller ponds where biomass is limited.
