Bill.
I know I may not be conventional.. But I think you guys scared me half to death with the " black crappies from hell " I keep reading here
LOL!
The truth is, I just moved into our new home about 8+ months ago. When we looked at the house, the pond was well stocked and had some nice sized LMB,BG and that was it ..
After we moved in all the sizable LMB were gone. Best I could tell, I only had 5 LMB in the 1lb range.. everything else was smaller.
I first found
www.jonesfish.com and had them bring me some new fish.. I added 5 - 1lb LMB, Red Ear, 12" Perch, 10" Crappie, 30 CC's
I then found this site and laughed at myself for making the "rookie" mistake of stocking too many species. :rolleyes: oh well!
Once here I had Ted Lea install an aeration system.. My DO was very bad when he came to the rescue.. Later that year Jones came and dropped off 35lbs of forage fish. The crappie and perch had plenty to eat over the winter.
This spring Jones came again and dropped off another shipment of 20/15 and again, I have tons of forage fish! This fall they are scheduled for the same.. 20/15
To date, I can see the much larger LMB, varying sizes of BG, and happy Crappie.. CC and Perch are pretty much unseen.
For structure, I have been makeing some rock piles from the tons of flag stone and field rocks that are piled in the adjacent woods and fields. I hope to add more soon.
This approach may be unorthodox but I do not know another way to speed up the growth of my fish.. I try to budget $6-800 a year for pond "stuff"
I am guessing it will be next year at the earliest before I can harvest any of my panfish??
