I'll chime in with a little bit about my own observations of my crappie population.
I had heard about from a neighbor that a person who fished the pond fairly regularly with permission from the previous owner had decided he'd "help" the pond out by stocking about 50 crappie (both white and black) that he had recently caught in another lake in the area. As the story goes, this occurred some time in 2004.
I had written the story off, assuming that either they never established or it was just rumor, since I had never caught a single one in 2 years of fishing. However, I never really targeted them in all honesty.
Then, in the Spring of last year my nephew called me up and said he had just caught what he thought was a really nice sized crappie. I told him to take a picture and send it to me, and I'd let him know. Sure enough, crappie... and a really nice sized one at that. So, I decided to do a little crappie fishing myself, sought out what I felt would be the best spots for them to congregate for spawn. I tried half a dozen spots and nothing, and then bingo... caught 5 crappie all about 8 inches long within 15 minutes and then nothing. Judging from their very uniform size, I assumed they were probably the same age. I tried fishing for them many more times that year, and only caught one more, but again, the same 8 inch size.
This Spring, while doing some early season bass fishing with my brother, I decided once again to give the crappie a try. Tried several spots, nothing. Went back to the exact same spot I had luck with the year before, bingo... 5 crappie in about 15 minutes and then nothing. Just like the year before! However, this time they were all right around 6 inches in size, presumably a different age class than the ones I had caught the year before.
Now, assuming the "Original 50" were stocked 7 years ago at this point, they've had plenty of time to populate the pond. Yet, they have certainly come nowhere close to overpopulating. There may be a few unique characteristics at play here however. Prior to purchasing the property, the pond had been almost entirely unmanaged with regard to the fish population. It also had very little fishing pressure, particularly for a pond of its size (roughly 12 acres). Additionally, golden shiners were "bait bucket stocked" around 2004 as well, and they had successfully established in the pond and still are going strong today. This in itself is impressive because the pond was on the bass heavy side, though not overly so. There is a massive amount of structure in the north end of our pond. Several acres of the north end are flooded woodlands, and the trees were left standing. There are also two small seasonal creeks in the north end. In addition, there is a generous amount of established vegetation in the 1-6 foot depth range. Golden shiners and crappie tend to spawn at just about the same time in my area. If anything, the golden shiners seem to possibly be a bit earlier.
As a result of all this, it is my belief that the golden shiners have enough protection in the pond to prevent heavy predation, so generous numbers of large breeder sized shiners continue to exist in the pond. I also believe recruitment is surprisingly high year after year due to the same. With this large population of golden shiners, I believe they may be having a substantial impact on crappie recruitment due to both species yoy competing for the same food sources as well as predation pressure on the larval stage crappie from the adult golden shiners. The pond remains a bit bass heavy (pretty normal for most of us), and I believe the adult bass may be hitting the remaining yoy crappie that escape the wrath of the golden shiners pretty hard, further keeping them in check.
Something is certainly at play here, and this seems plausible to me. Anyone have any thoughts?
