Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain adding crawfish for my bass

I have a 1 1/4 acre pond with areiation and I stocked 75 Tiger bass last summer.(I already had a bunch of coppernose that were spawning the previous year). I stocked 2" bass in the middle of June and 4 months later they were 12" long and weighted 12 oz. I would like to add some crawfish for them this spring but I don't know how many and if I sould just buy the sacks they sell for crawfish boils or not. Any advice?

That is an excellent growth rate on your bass!

Do you have any good cover for your crawfish? Such as platy rock piles? If not, then your crawfish may just be expensive "one-time" snacks.

You might search the forum. There are lots of good threads on crawfish.

Hopefully, some of our crawfish experts will drop into your thread.

You really want to get some underwater vegetation established in the pond before adding crawfish. If not, then you will be fighting algae. The underwater weeds will help the fish habitat too.

See about getting some White River Craws from Arkansas. Who did you use to source your bass and CNBG? See if they can get them. The sacks of Louisiana craws will burrow into the banks of the pond and create little dirt chimneys around the pond in the grass.

I have put a feeder out and feed my CNBG 3 times a day and the last summer they spawned like crazy. I had baby CNBG everywhere plus I added 20 lbs of shiners a couple of times last summer so the bass had plenty to eat. I got them from America Sport Fish in Alabama and the CNBG from Overton Hatchery. I bought 100 larger breaders and 1100 smaller ones that should breed this year. As far as structure goes I put out 5 very large root balls from pine trees and buried some logs. Plus I put out a bunch of plastic structure I bought and there is a lot of vegetation starting to grow arount the pond. I also planted some pickerelweed and some lily pads. This next week I will be putting some rip rap along the edge of the pond in some places.

Call either of them. They both get some of their fish from the Lonoke Arkansas area, and that's where I source my White River Crawfish from for my customers. They won't be available until May or June, they hibernate in the mud during the winter.