Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations trophy crappie pond with a twist

Ok,you will have to agree, this will be a true trophy crappie POND. Pond is 4 years old, stocked a gallon of Goldens 3 years ago. Noticed fatheads had arrived but it's inside a 1/4 mile of fathead brood ponds so I guess it was bound to happen. All but have left it alone wanting the goldens to reproduce, there is some natural habbitat for them to spawn but must not be enough.

Tossed 4 G traps and 4 larger home made traps baited with cat food. Caught gallons of small skinny fhm and two proud n healthy 5" goldens. So what effect would one lucky crappie have on this pond? It's maybe a half acre and over 8' deep. It didn't totally dry up in our drought and never winter killed.

It does have some suspended clay I am guessing, water has that creamy blue color on windy days.

Maybe I'll price check getting a couple sterile crappie shipped but I doubt that would be a rewarding experience.
my hope is to have GHS production pond, so I need to control the fhm or eliminate them.

The pond is such that the deep water would be hard to siene but maybe the neck and one bend could be.

So what are your thoughts and stocking recommendations to double this pond as a trophy crappie pond.

1 crappie? Well first off most folks would tell you NOT to put crappie in a pond that small! So it would be good for 1 crappie! I am sure they would eat the fat heads and or the smaller Golden's, but the larger GSH a crappie would not eat I don't think unless this crappie was like 4 lbs.

Then you ask how to make this a trophy crappie pond? I'm confused as to what you want to do? I thought you were making a GSH pond?

If you wanted to make that small of a pond a trophy crappie pond I would say put about 20 crappie in it ALL the same sex!! If you can get that done. Other wise it just wont work for very long. In 3 years you would be overran with 5 inch crappie. Thats just M.O.

RC

If the question is will 1 crappie have a noticeable impact on the FHM population, IMO the answer is no but, you should grow 1 nice crappie!

Have you thought about HSB? They won't reproduce, they eat a lot, and their mouths are too small to eat a large GSH. You add them gradually until the FHM are under control, then stop so you don't have enough to wipe out all your shiners. Plus they are a blast to catch on a lightweight rod. Just an idea.

A Crappie will be like any other fish and eat the largest fish it can. If you stocked a 2-3" Crappie, it would eat lots of FHM and juvenile GSH until it gets around 6", which would happen quickly. Then it will all but ignore FHM and small GSH.

To help you put things in perspective, a "Gallon" of GSH is ~8 pounds of fish and will reproduce, probably over 100 hundreds pounds a year after YOY grow. ONE Crappie probably won't eat much more than about 10-20 pounds in an entire year.

Rainman, you reply has me curious. You said a 6" crappie would all but ignore FHM and small GSH. What would it eat then?

Thanks Rex. Maybe one year to knock the fatheads back and restablish gsh is all it would take. Then the crappie would be a bonus treat.

Do you have a supplier that would sell 20-25 sterile crappie? And ship them.
Hopefully I can put together a better order. I am in need of some RES again for other ponds.

This pond is up stream from other brood ponds so I would hate to risk single sexING the crappie.

Thanks.!

Larger fish...in this scenario, mid range GSH. More meat for the bite. Most piscivore fish will target the largest prey they can eat when it is abundant. They only eat smaller fish when trying to survive leaner times.

JM Malone has tried to produce triploidy BCP, but the survival rate was under 5%, I think, so it just isn't economically viable. I think some states with big budgets still produce triploid BCP. Hybrid Black Crappie reproduce, but offspring are inferior...LMB have shown to be able to control populations and little or no HBCP recruitment is being seen in ponds with LMB.

Oh well. Thought I would try. I need to get brave at my single sexING now or just make one crappie really happy.

Thanks Rex.