Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Crayfish/Crawfish/Crawdad

I've ready many posts here on PondBoss about people intentionally putting crayfish / crawfish / crawdads (whatever you want to call them) into their ponds.

Many of the people with ponds here in northern KY cringe at the thought of that as they seem to dig holes through the dam and lower the water level. These folks put rock salt in the holes to try to get rid of the problem critters.

Have any of you had good or bad experiences with these in your ponds?

Thanks

I got ~100 northern crayfish from QA last summer for my pond. Primarily to build the food chain for the RES, and the SMB that are going in this fall.

They seem to be doing well. I find dozens of baby crays any time I rake FA. They haven't done any damage to my bumper crop of APW and arrowhead.
It does appear that they are working on the sago pretty hard. I have thousands of small sago bits floating all over the pond this summer.
Last summer the sago stayed intact unless it was disturbed by the rake or daughter's Doberman that thinks it's a Lab.

The northerns aren't bad about drilling holes in the dam, either. I don't see tunnels or chimneys anywhere.

A side benefit of adding the crays has been a notable reduction in water clarity. This time last summer I had ~6' visibility. This year visibility is running ~2'-3',
which is still plenty good. I suppose some of the reduction in visibility can be attributed to the increase in activity in the pond. The laberman dog is in there
several times a day, and we've been swimming a couple or three times a week since the surface temp hit 75°. This time last year the dock wasn't finished,
so we weren't swimming much, and the dog was still a pup and too scared to get in much. So I can't be certain how much of the increase in turbidity is due
to the crays vs. the increase in mechanical agitation, but I like to think that the crays are playing a part in that.

I'm having the same results as Augie. Mine may be somewhat worse in that my craws are eliminating a lot of (most) vegetation I want to be here. My vis this year is even lower than last year, currently around 14-16" at best and my SMB don't seem to be making much of a dent in the population but I am completely riprapped around entire pond due to my extremely windy location with several deeper rock piles and structures.
I'm finding this is going to be a delicate balance for required forage for SMB without having turbidity issues.
I stocked 2 lbs of craws late summer of 2018 when I stocked my smallies and I can say for sure I wish I would have waited to get a little more size on the fish.
Last October I removed 21lbs of craws from my 5/8 ac pond and I don't think I hurt the craw population any.
I believe in my case, I may start trapping and removing the largest craws to try and get a handle on things.
If you want to add craws, proceed with caution-even the Northern variety can become a nuisance if conditions are right for their survival.