Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations crappie slot size limit

I was thinking of making a size limit for mixed BC and WC crappie in my pond to protect the breeders and increase trophy potential.

last year I'd estimate the overall average weight is 1#, since stocking in 2018.

My thought is to start releasing all over 13" and harvesting slot of 9-13"

I feel the 1-acre pond is well balanced including the BG and LMB

any advice or thoughts on this approach?
thanks

As the owner of a 2.5 acre pond with BC, my advice to you is to keep EVERY SINGLE ONE you catch. I doubt you can make a dent. Also would advise you to find a relative weight table for crappie and begin weighing and measuring all BC caught. You get some hard data on how well they are doing, growth wise. If many/most are below 100% RW (relative weight) you know there's too many/too little forage. BC/WC are a really tough fish to manage effectively. They spawn like demons (and earlier than all other fish) some years, and then nothing other years. They are also pelagic, meaning they hang out in open water instead of near structure. This means your typical apex predators like LMB don't consume very many. I've read on PB forum that 'potentially' a more pelagic predator like HSB (hybrid striped bass) might make a dent in BC numbers, but I don't have any data on that. I stocked some once, but lost them to a fish kill (story for another time).

Not trying to rain on your parade at all. BC are a great table fish. They're just hard to manage in small impoundments.

Just my 2 cents. I'm sure the expert staff will chime in with better ideas.

You've got to start somewhere, and that 9-13" limit seems reasonable; 8-12" could be good also.

The only thing I might seek to add is an exception for a specimen that has a heavier relative weight number.

I keep all crappie under 12-ish inches. The longest we've caught was 19. But, my average is not nearly as long as I'd like and not nearly as heavy as I'd like. I hope it works for you!

I have a 6 acre pond that I stocked in 2013 and next year caught the cr—p out of BCP 5-7” long . It’s been downhill ever since . Have some large LMB (10#) that ate the majority of them I presume. Used to catch all that I wanted anywhere in the pond. Now fishing hard for them I might catch a few9-12” but no numbers no small ones caught at all. Kinda sad cause they are my preferred fish. Have started keeping all bass and transporting all big bass to a neighbors pond ( with his blessing) hoping that they might get a spawn off this year

To work ... on the recruitment side ... you must not get excessive recruits <9". It would depend on that.

Most ponds, (though there are exceptions ... like Pat's), have too many recruits less than 9". In most water, some exploitation of sizes smaller than 9" would be required to get them into the 10+ territory. Let recruitment be your guide on that and if you get numerous fish in the smaller bracket adjust for that. There should be a limit to how much biomass you remove in the adult sizes (> 10"). Ideally, your exploitation would not exceed 25 to 35% of the adult biomass in any given year. If overexploited that real estate could be taken over by BG.

I will mention that the idea of protecting brooders and taking 9" to 13" crappie does seem a bit contradictory. These sizes are brood sized fish and contribute meaningfully to recruitment. Another thing to consider is that >10" crappie depend in large part on small fish prey. In that sense, they are like little bass and because of that their biomass cannot be all that high. A practical limit for fish of that size is probably between 60 and 100 lbs/acre and such a population would be limited to between 40 and 60 adult (adult being >10") crappie/acre. It depends on natural mortality, but looking at this in the past with natural mortality of 15% and exploitation at 25% .... annual recruitment of 20 BCP to the 10" class allowed for annual exploitation of 13 adult BCP per acre-year where the 13" milestone is reached at 5 years of age at a population density of ~1 BCP/acre. There could be several years of successive recruitment, however, so the total population density of >13" fish could be as high as 4 or 5 to the acre (here assuming you are not harvesting > 13" BCP)

The biggest obstacle is the recruitment piece which can be unreliable from two perspectives. One is under-recruitment where insufficient BCP are recruited into the 10" class annually. The other is over-recruitment where too many BCP are recruited and they grow too slowly to reach 10". What makes BCP so challenging is that a pond will not support a large number of adults but they have the capacity to greatly over recruit what is needed to sustain a modest adult population. Because of irregular recruitment, you may not be able to recruit at 20 per acre year. But rather you may get 4 years of no recruitment and then a boom year. If you can recruit consistently that would be most ideal. For example, purchasing 20 10" BCP per year and stocking them. I like the idea of marking by fin clips the BCP you want to protect. Fin clipped, you know to throw them back if you have already met quota for the year. When a fish is not fin clipped, you know to remove it indiscriminately.

Wow thanks for all this advice and info
Ive learned a lot so far

Also I wanted to give a little more context and ask a couple questions

I have not measured much BC just a few 13 to 14” fish.
and I absolutely need to measure weigh and record my catches

Harvest - rough estimate for the last 3 years
95% eating size 12oz to 19oz
5% medium 6-8”
rare under 6”
Fry? > unsure how much
40# to 50# annual harvest

Questions
1 fecundity > does it change with size?
2 trophy size potential> what harvest approach would work best ?
3 consistent large keeper size harvest > what would maintain a consistent amount of keepers +12oz

Thanks in advance

For now. It will change quickly.

I have a 5 acre pond......the biologist told me to remove 150#'s every year. I tell my guests that every BCP caught comes out regardless of size because we never met the 150# goal.

T. Do you get a lot of recruitment of BCP? If so how do you get them to spawn

Half-price drinks for ladies at the sand bar?

Might be the wrong females…….

Yes a lot of recruitment. I have lots of med and large fish but they struggle to meet relative weights.




If only 10% of fry reach adulthood that is still A LOT of fish.



.

I think our problem is the weather here warms up for a while then the temperature drops to far and the crappie after this happens a few times they give up…. And the large LMB eat the heck out of the crappie. Bottom line very few BCP. Added 25 13+” last year so we will see if any spawn this year

Suggest you take a look at the archive thread on Crappie.

https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92447#Post92447