Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations crayfish? how many pounds per acre do i need

looking to catch my own crayfish and give a supplement for the LMB. How many pounds of crayfish need to added per acre?I live in Northwest Florida, so we have plenty of them to catch, just need to get a good idea of what we need to shoot for.

As many as you can.. More the merrier..

Mostly you want to start with 50 pounds. Check with Lakework.com they have crawfish in spring. Just contact them if you want crawfish and any more questions. I am getting some crawfish for my bass too.

It depends on how many pounds of bass you have. It generally takes 10 pounds of forage for a bass to gain one pound. That's lots of mudbugs.

yup can't have too many if feeding bass. Common rec. is 50 lbs/acre in attempts to establish a populaiton.

what is the cost of crawfish per pound?

As with adding forage fish, it depends on size and type of existing fishery. It does not take lots of stockers if it is a new pond and stockers are allowed to reproduce before predators are added. IMO if predators exist it probably takes at LEAST 10 -100 times more; again it depends on amount of refugia habitat. Refugia habitat is NOT normal supplimentally added fish structure.

Bill, can you expand a little bit on refugia habitat?

My presentation at the IVth Pond Boss Convention in April is about using emergent plants as shallow water refugia. Refugia is plural of refugium. Refugia habitat is equivalent to natural fishery nursery areas that have extensive amounts of dense cover such as submerged weed beds or emergent shoreline plants. Fishing structure is not considered good refugia. It is not expansive enough compared to the acerage of water it serves. Good refugia amounts to 20%-30% or more of the total shoreline (up to 2-5ft deep) with submerged weed beds or equivalent. Ideally the weed beds should not be so dense the fish cannot swim through it. You want good cover with pathways and feeding areas for small fishes while providing feeding and hunting areas for larger fish. Good submerged aquatic plants are many of the Potamogetons (pondweeds), water lilies, eel or tape grass, stargras (Zosterella or Hetercanthera). Many of the non-rampent emergent plants provide good shallow water refugia.

Bill, will the topic be covering plants that can be used in ponds that have fluctuating water levels????

scott price fluctates with market demands. I try to time it for my customers when prices are lower- May usually.

Most marginal plants will tolerate very well fluxuating water levels.

That is what i thought about the amount, i don't think you can put too many in. We do want to try to establish a population if we can. We have two lakes one 7 acres and one about 9 acres. I guess we will try to go with 50 lbs per acre and see how many we can gather. Next two questions, about how many will make 50 lbs and when is the best time of the year to get started catching them. I know at times around her (Jay FL) near Pensacola, they run in great numbers, and are very easy to catch.
One thing i did forget to add is that the lakes do have an established fish population.