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I bought this property 11 years ago and over that time we have caught some whoopers from the little 5 acre pond.

Nice T
Like the crappie best, wish I could get them like that in my 6acre puddle

Tbar - Glad to see that you have most of your anglers trained of how to properly hold a big bass. Your fish management methods seem to be working really good. You are doing good harvesting the smaller crappie. The big bass are probagly eating some crappie to help reduce the numbers of small crappie.

Every single big bass picture (except one) showed an angler wearing very warm clothing.

Is early in the day, early in the spring spawn the time people have caught most of the big bass from your pond?

Believe it or not some of those are taken in the dead of winter.

TBar - I have some 'nosey" crappie (BCP) and pond questions for you.
1. About how many BCP are removed each year from your 5 acres?
2. Are all the BCP removed by just angling?
3. What is the most common size of BCP of those that are removed from the pond?
4. What is the size range of the largest or biggest lengths of BCP from the pond?
5. What do you think the main food item is for the BCP?
5. Are there are also bluegill in the live box of the pond? Do you harvest them?
4a. Are BCP or bluegill most abundant forage fish in the pond?
6. Do you keep a record of all the fish species that are caught and ones that are rermoved each year.
7. Would call your LMB population scarse , common or abundant?.
8. Are just LMB the main predators of the BCP?
9. What is the most common size of LMB caught by anglers?
10. Do you feed pellets and how many total pounds fed in 5 acres per year?

Wow, that's a lot of questions.


I feed ~ 100#'s correction ten 50# bags to the CNBG & TP every year from one feeder.

Tbar - Great information. Thanks for the fishery updates. Evidently the BCP are spawning and recruitment is strong. Maybe consider adding 5 to 10 per acre hybrid striped bass as a bonus fish and to help reduce the number of BCP when they as 'young of year' (YOY) ones spend lots of time in open water where the HSB will mostly hang out. HSB will eat pellets to get growing quickly to sizes that should eat lots of small BCP. HSB will become one of your favorite predators to catch as they fight noticably harder than LMB. If you add some to the pond, please come back with an update report for us with inquiring minds.

I think you should be measuring the most common sizes of BCP and also the largest BCP you are catching each year. This will let you know how well the BCP have been historically and how their current size structure is so you have a decent idea what and how the size structure of the population is progressing. Are they trending smaller - larger - or staying about the same each year? Example: most catches are 7"-9", and 20% are 9.5-11" and 10% are 11.5" to 14", and rarely get several 14"+ as maybe 6 of them per yr.

PS - Nice live box that you have built and use.

Every year it surprises me how many crappie we catch.

Tbar,

This is my wife's idea of heaven. She loves crappie above all else. You've got a really great balance in your pond. In particular, either the recruitment of LMB isn't too much ... or ... there is a fair amount of culling helping to grow those large LMB. Can you expand on that part of your management? I've read where some authors thought crappie tend to hold down LMB recruitment. If excessive, this could be problematic setting the stage for crappie overpopulation. But your pond, seems to get either the goldilocks recruitment to grow BIG LMB or perhaps a little more than needed which is managed by culling. Please share your thoughts, if any, on the interaction pertaining to LMB recruitment.

You mentioned feeding 100 lbs of feed annually in your 5 acre pond. So 2 bags each year or 20 lbs per acre-year? Was curious if this was a typo and you meant a larger quantity. Whatever the case, your pond is very productive. You've owned the BOW for 11 years ... but did this pond exist prior to your ownership of it? If so, would you happen to know it's age?

I've studied LMB and crappie in combination in simulation trying to see if I could/should risk crappie. My wife really wants them. For that matter, so would I ... if I could be confident of managing something like what you are enjoying year after year. In simulation, what gives me the most confidence is a limited LMB population of low density but high average size. This seems to work where LMB are capable of consuming 0-year and year-1 crappie. 2nd year and older crappie would be harvested. Your pond seems to reflect the size structure of these simulations (something that encourages the choice of crappie for me). I am interested in your thoughts on your population structure. What sizes do LMB average? eg 2 lbs - 3lbs or possibly higher?

Sorry, 100#'s is incorrect. I fed ten 50# bags this year to the TP and CNBG.
The pond was dug by the PO. I do not know its age other than knowing its =<40 years old. He let lots of people fish it. When I closed it down I heard a lot of complaining from people in town.

Yesterday was a good day at the pond. My son and two friends came over to fish and helped me take ~30 cull LMB out of the pond.

They also took home 29 BC one of which was 2.11 pounds.

My frying pan yearns for a 2.11 pound crappie.

Good job, Tbar!

That fine fish appears to be a White Crappie. Noticed what appeared to be a few WCP sprinkled in the pics but this photo is detailed enough to make a better visual determination.

Reminds me of a story when a friend ran into a guy hunting on his best friend's new property up near Muenster, Texas. The trespassing guy stated "I been hunting on this land for many years, these city folk come out and buy the land and think they own it".

Thanks for sharing. Great pictures!

Jpsdad I noticed that also that a lot were white crappie…. Maybe that’s the key to making them work in my pond. I’m still having problems getting more reproducing of them

Pat, I think if you had WCP that you would see more recruitment of Crappie. Every pond is different and so different ponds will evolve differently. It's not clear how your particular pond will evolve.

Some authors (starting with Swingle) thought/think that Crappie can cause LMB recruitment to fail. If this were to happen, the most dreaded case (some say this is inevitable) where a pond becomes forage locked with stunted crappie can occur. Tbar's pond is an example of good balance between the LMB and crappie (and BG). And his pond is >= 40 years of age so good balance in a crappie BOW of <20 acres is possible. I think the key is regular (but not excessive) recruitment of LMB. There should be some representation of LMB that are large enough to consume 4-7" crappie (consume them easily enough to effectively control the number crappie surviving the second year). The balance would be good when enough survive to 8" each year to supply your annual exploitation and the needed recruitment of brood crappie.

If you were going to try adding WCP, there are a couple of approaches you could try. Stocking brood fish or stocking large numbers of consumable WCP. To be affordable, the latter would have to be home grown, eg a drainable forage pond. If you were successful in establishing a population that can recruit in situ in sufficient numbers you could transition that forage pond to the production of minnows (eg a box of GSH growing them to nursed fry stage and then for the remainder production of FHM). I think it would take some time to get a good population of crappie established. I think, presently, the BG are numerous enough that the space for crappie is limited. This may be why you are having such limited recruitment of BCP ... but I am in no way certain of that.

Amazing pictures Tbar!

If these pictures show us anything is that Tbar has an amazing balance in his pond, some beautiful LMB and an abundance of really nice eating size crappie, all the way up to a trophy sized crappie in a 2 plus pounder.

What these pictures also shows us that he is not scared to harvest a lot of crappie, they are relatively easy to catch, can be caught by the hundreds during the spawning season.

What they also show us that this feller eats better then most folks, enjoying those crappie, making my mouth water looking at the crappie pics.

What I have not figured out is why so many people are so affeared of having a lot of crappie to eat, I cant imagine sitting on the bank and crying about the crappie taking over your body of water. grab a pole and some bait, almost any bait, and catch the over run of crappie, get their numbers in balance, and have some of the best eating out of your pond, and a ton of fun catching them.

An easy indicator for the success of crappie in your pond is their size, if they are smaller then you'd like, you're not eating enough of them.

This is gospel truth from my experience with crappie(we call them white perch down here lol).

My brother lives on a sub division lake that has roughly 20 houses on it. Year one of him living there, we caught tons of crappie but they were all 6-8 inches long. I'm not sure how many other families were keeping them, but we did our part and kept about 100 fish that year. Incredible eating.

Year two, same experience...no change in lengths but once again we did our part keeping around 100 fish again. By year three we finally could see the improvement with lots of fish over 12 inches in length. We continue to keep about 100 fish a year from that body of water and the fish look so much healthier.

Honestly, I'm pretty sure we could have kept triple the fish per year and been just fine.....

Jpsdad
I would love to stock WCP but no one sells them and I don’t have a place to catch brood stock for stocking

Another good morning fishing yesterday. The 9-pounder was a blast to reel in.

A 3-pounder, two 5-pounders, then a 9-pounder.

Why on earth did you stop fishing?

By my math you would have had some double-digit bass on the hook next.

With ten more fish landed, you probably would have caught the world record!

Nice work Tbar !

Things you hate to see.

A Bald Eagle was struggling to pull it out of the water(pretty sure it was already dead).