Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Crappie/Green Sunfish?

I have 1/3 acre springfed clearwater pond that used to have bass,bluegill,crappie. pond was drained and dugout. the only fish in there now are Greensunfish. I am about to go buy fish for my other ponds, my question is if I bought some Black Crappie do you think they would do OK with the Greensunfish? or would I be wasting my time?


p.s. the pond once produced a couple of 3 pound White Crappie


as always thanks for the great advice

flymoron

Unless you want to work hard at controlling their numbers for years to come, I'd say don't add them to the pond.

There's lots of information here on Crappies in small ponds, and very few have large crappie in them. It's the exception rather than the norm.

How do I control their numbers?
remember I am a moron


flymoron

Through a combination of intensive angling, netting and traps. Only using one method generally doesn't control them well enough. Crappies are boom or bust spawners. Some years they dud and produce no young, especially in smaller ponds. Then you have a boom year where they produce far too many young. That year class will dominate for years to come. If not controlled it leads to many thousands of 4" paper thin crappies. White crappies are even more prone to this than black.

Lusk once told about a Northeast Texas Lake that he electroshocked. They found 7 year old crappie that were 4 inches long.

They are tough to manage in general, but it's harder in small ponds. We are having good success with them, but our harvest rate is very large. There are some pond managers that are having success with crappie and HSB in small ponds.

IMO crappie in a small pond with no apex predator would be near impossible to control without a large human intervention.

I agree with ewest. It's a tough row to hoe. There are much more manageable options out there.

I say kill what you have and start over again lol.. Why is there greenies?