Originally posted by Theo Gallus:
I believe we have three main schools of thought on Crappie (so far):
1) Conventional - don't have Crappie in small ponds (smaller than XX acres of water).
2) Treat Crappie like Forage: Manage Crappie by overloading with stunted bass (to eat lots of small Crappie).
3) Treat Crappie like Predators: Manage Crappie by overloading with small BG, GShiners, etc. (to eat virtually all of the eggs/fry when the Crappie spawn)...
Theo,
My favorite crappie ponds conform most closely to #3. They all have plenty of shallow weedy areas and structure for small forage species to reproduce in huge numbers.
When my pond is completed, I intend to "raise" only fatheads, Gshiners, gambusia, grass shrimp, and insects. Most of my strategy, work, and money will go into the forage species. They are the real blue-collar workers and real basis of the pond.
If I do a good job, the "white collar" fish... the bass, bream, and crappie, will fluorish. I do not believe in having only 3 or 4 species whare you must rely on predator species also being primary forage. There are too many things to go wrong and you can have booms or crashes before you know what happened.
