[/quote]After the pond is several years old with a few regular ladder stocked HSB and IF minnows/shiners are able to maintain good natural numbers in the pond without minnow/shiner supplemental stockings then you could add regular black crappie. Crappie need ample food to grow. Having to add minnows each year means there are too many predators present for the current habitat conditions.
Regular crappie can be very prolific in some ponds. YOY crappie usually live several weeks in open water where HSB could noticeably reduce their density and minimize chance of overpopulation. This risk I would not take if hybrid crappie were available within 200 miles or by next day air UPS. One thing that I would do if you add crappie is to remove another panfish at a 1:1 ratio of panfish each new crappie. You need to make biomass room for an added new species rather than stocking more fish on top of the current carrying capacity. When one does that some specie or both species usually suffer in some way; usually its growth.
[quote] I would love to have SMB, just didn't think they would work in a relatively small pond with no moving water and no sand/gravel on the bottom.
SMB will thrive in a small pond as small as 0.2 ac. This summer I will be trying them in a 0.1 ac pond. Smb do not need moving water, nor cool water nor sand gravel bottom. I grew smallies to 18" in a 0.3 ac mud bottom pond. I could not stop them from spawning. SMB are poor predators of most types of sunfish.
See my PBoss mag 5 articles about growing SMB in ponds.
https://www.bassresource.com/fish_biology/growing-smallmouth.html
