Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Evaluating New Pond and New Fish

When stocking crays for long term forage items make sure there is lots of rocky habitat that they can use as home refuge areas from hungry bass and YP. IMO you cannot have too much rocky structure if you want a thriving cray population. Banks lined with rocky material. To my knowledge the crays come out of the refugia regularly at night to shed their carapace as they grow. At this time with their new very soft shell is when they are VERY vulnerable to predation. The adults have to survive to get fertilized, develop eggs and release YOY crays into good refuge habitat. Take time to do your homework of the life history of the cray specie/s that you stocked. Some species develop and incubate eggs differently than other species.

TP - do your best efforts to purchase 50:50 male:female TP.

GAMS - unless you have LOTS of shallow, shoreline, emergent plant habitat as GAM refugia the YOY LMB will eliminate the GAMs in 2025. YOY LMB are good at hunting among emergent plants. The amount of emergent plants will determine the survival of GAMs. IMO lots = lots and none = none and in my experience some plants = none.

Refresh our memory. How big is the pond and how many mixed sex LMB did you stock?? Remember 50% of the LMB that you stocked were males. Your 2024 YOY LMB WILL have LMB reproduction in Spring of 2025. Maybe use the late pre-spawn 2025 period to remove male LMB from nests? At least I would try it to see how well it works for you. IMO you don't need to be feeding forage to male LMB. One or two male LMB nests will produce more than enough new crop LMB for any size pond.