That footage was taken at the lake that has had a probelm seeping down every year (from the leaky lake threads). I hope we got that fixed this year, but I can't tell for sure in hot weather because all lakes are dropping a little due to evaporation.
The size is around five acres. It was stocked with Coppernose bluegill, shellcrackers, and black crappie in February of 2009. I know that almost all agencies advise against stocking crappie in anything less that about 300 acres. But I've done it several times and have never had a problem. In fact, I stocked my other lake with black crappie 20 years ago and today we don't catch many crappie there. I have a good population of bass and that has worked well for me to keep the crappie population down. The crappie we do catch are nice ones, so that lets me know that the black crappioe strain from the early 1990s is still alive, well, and reproducing.
I had so much trouble building that crappie population up, that when I re-stocked the lake in this feeding video I did not add bass. I decided to wait three years so the crappie could get at least one good spawn before I added bass. So, in the video you see a lot of 1-2-3 year old bluegill that have never seen a bass. Their population has never been thinned. At my other lake the bluegill don't gang up like this to feed, moving in huge schools. At the older lake we see big bass literally knocking bluegill out of the water while the bluegill are in their feeding frenzy.
I did some "single line sampling" a couple of times this spring to see how my crappie are doing in the "new" lake shown in this video. Everything looks good. I caught handsize and somewhat larger crappie and also fingerlings, so I know they spawned. I plan to add bass this coming Spring. I barely missed it on camera, but a nice crappie swirled as I made the video, but he wasn't in the camera field of view. That would have shown the largest and oldest crappie class in the lake. It also makes me suspect that a select few crappie might actually eat some of the feed. OR...the feed might be drawing baitfish that I can't see, such as the small fatheads. If they are drawn in to eat the small feed crumbs then the crappie might be moving in to snap them up.
I loved doing that video, and had the right lighting to show the huge schools of Coppernose that come to feed.
Don AKA "Bill"
