Hey guys! Been viewing some threads for a while and finally made an account! Anyway, A buddy and I want to 'fix' a pond that our fathers built about 5 years ago, that they have since given up on. The pond is roughly 21-22 acres, with a max depth of about 24 feet, with a few humps and sunken tress here and there. Most of the pond is around 14-16 feet, and very clear. The current species that are in there are Black Crappie, Bluegill, Largemouth bass, and 6 little Walleye. The pond is currently dominated by the crappie. tons of 6-7" , tons of little 2-5", and a pretty decent amount of 8" and above. Bluegill can be caught, most around the 5-7" range, a few bigger ones. We have only seen 4-5 largies, but all seemed to be at least 3-4 lbs. about a week ago we put 6 walleye in there, ranging from 9-13". The crappie are all pretty skinny, but we've recently been doing our best to supplement the pond with shiners and fatheads. Our current plan is to hit the crappie as hard as we can when the ice melts when they stage for spawn, but that will only do so much. Other than harvesting them, what are some other ways to help control the crappie population/increase the amount of walleyes and bass, mainly walleye? We've thought about adding some musky possibly, but that might affect the Eyes and bass. Introducing crayfish was another thought to provide some other food sources, but we are both seniors in high school, and don't have a ton of cash to throw at this project. Any thoughts, criticisms, questions and anything else is appreciated!
Thanks!
Howdy MnAngler,
So the pond is 5 years old and totally out of whack. Can you shed any light on how it was stocked. For example, stocking rates of LMB, BG, and Crappie? Also can you make a good estimate of the percentages of the different sizes of crappie (eg 70% 2-5", 25% 5-7", 5% 7-10"). This would be very helpful in terms of estimating populations.
This pond is what is known as forage locked. It can happen with any forage but BCP and GSHD are two very prone to locking up the biome. So a couple of things might have caused it. Bucket stocking adult fish is one possible cause. So Nature abhors a vacuum, and if this was the case, the initial stocking did not take up enough of the carry capacity the first growing season. Such would lead to the crappie filling that vacuum being a an early spawner. There may have been a suitable stocking of fingerlings, but subsequently over harvest of the LMB before successfully recruiting may have occurred. Whatever the case, it is clear that the LMB are severely under populated.
So how do I know the pond is forage locked? There are two year classes of slow growing BCP and the LMB have grown well. In other words, the LMB are growing at a decent pace (getting most of what they can eat) but they are not keeping up with either of these year classes. The current situation is probably one where no species in the pond can successfully recruit without significant mortality of the populations. So gehajake made a good suggestion, don't be picky about the size. Get a bunch of those BCP out of there. For now, do not remove predators of any size. You need some large predators that are big enough to consume at least the 2-5" year class that is abundant. If you don't stock them large enough, they will not grow fast enough to make a noticeable impact and could even decline from competitive pressures.
I could make an estimate of how many large predators to stock if I had a better understanding of the population structure (the percentages of the size brackets).
