Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Crappie Pond

Matt, it sounds like an interesting pond. Would you sum up the fish species present as follows?

LMB - in balance
Crappie -in balance
CC - Heavy
BG - heavy?
FH - still around?
any other species I missed?

It seems like if we could sum up the species present in the "good" crappie ponds along with pond demographics we may be able to come up with some common features.

There is a pond next door to me with crappie. It is about 1 acre. The crappie are somewhat rare but the population has persisted for at least 10 years. I will try to grill the owner for details and report back. The pond used to have YP, SMB BG, PumkinSeeds, and LMB but things may have changed.

JayMan, I think you are right, there are some small ponds consistantly producing good sized crappie. We just need to find out what is happening in them and copy what is happening in these lakes.

Moderators, can you move this thread to "Types of fish to choose" where we would expect to find it?

In northern waters we have walleye/saugeye and yellow perch as an additional predator to control crappie populations. We don't know if HSB can fill this role or not. I hope that someone tries LMB and HSB along with BG, Red-ears and crappie to see if it works. Maybe adding CC would help.

For people in the South where walleye/sauger and yellow perch aren't an option, what additional predator can we give them as an option? I would like to give people that wish to have crappie in their lakes a realistic option to try.

Jayman:

"LMB - in balance - pretty close
Crappie -in balance - must be
CC - Heavy - true, but tough to catch (except on Catalpa worms! )
BG - heavy? - not so much, as it's not every cast...
FH - still around? - not on your life....
any other species I missed?" Flatheads...at least a couple nice ones, although we've never caught any, we put them in.

'Bout covers it...far as I know, except a few greenies, prolly left over from reverted HBG...I can only hope either of my ponds turns out so good.

Maybe one other factor is that, while it's relatively close, at 6 miles, we don't fish it as much as we probably should. A couple neighbors trespass (and fish?) regularly, but maybe that's actually helping. Pond's not visible from the highway and is on a dead end gravel.

I also have a similar situation. We moved in about five years ago and the pond was overcrowded with small bass, lots of big bluegill but virtually no small bluegill and about 50 small (12") CC. We also caught a few very large crappie. I assumed at the time that they were all the same sex because we only caught two or three a year with pretty heavy fishing and they were all very large. I began removing all small bass and feeding the cats and bluegill. About three years later we had lots of bluegill in all sizes, the bass were starting get get larger and we had CC up to 10 pounds.

Then the milfoil showed up. Almost completely covered the pond. The pond is very fertile because the runoff comes from a horse pasture. I had to use chemicals to control the milfoil. It is now mostly under control. One day if Feb. I was fishing when the water temps up here were probably still in the low 40s and I started catching crappie. I was surprised because I had never really caught many crappie. Anytime I fished next to woody structure I was catching 6 - 9" crappie. Still lots of bluegills including small ones. In the last two months we have taken out between 100 - 200 crappie. I have caught a couple big ones that were thrown back. The bass are still looking good with some pushing two pounds. The crappie population seems to be under control since we are not catching as nearly as many as we were. This may also be due to the fact that they are probably done spawning. The ones that we were catching were either very dark (males in spawning color) or had eggs.

As long as they don't seem to get stunted I will try to keep all the small to medium sized crappie we catch and throw back the really big ones to grow. I was going to try stocking tilapia this year, but apparently they are not on the Illinois approved stocking list. So I am going to try stocking some Golden Shiners and grow some out in horse troughs to use for stocking and bait.

Norm :

I have added a link under Types of Fish to Choose to this thread. Here it is. I did not want to copy and paste it there as it would look like I posted it all. We can't move it there by clicking a button but J. P. might be able to do so. It really should go there , but there are a lot of other threads that could also be moved.


http://www.pondboss.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=5&t=000461

Here is one on black vs. white crappie.

http://www.pondboss.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=5;t=000402;p=1

Thank you, Eric. This will help others find this subject.

Now, for the people in the South, we have a theory going. This theory is that we get stunting by crappie when we have small lakes with only LMB as predators. In the North, we have walleye/saugeye and yellow perch as additional predators. We are trying HSB all over the country but not necessarily with crappie.

In the South, if someone wants crappie, what additional predator can we suggest for them to try?

Thanks to all of you for your input!

Norm,
Are flatheads an option?
Chip

At the risk of stirring the pot , I do want to remind everyone that there is a good study of largemouth bass controlling crappies in Midwestern ponds. If anyone would like a copy of that paper, either post an email address here or email me, and I will send an electronic copy.

Dave,
I'm interested.
[email protected]

Dave, you know I want it, I'll send you a private post with my e-mail address.

Geographic regions are always a wildcard...it's amazing how the management changes. The latest PB issue article on forage fish in northern ponds amazed me. I can't imagine a LMB pond without BG, but I'm guessing a northern pond owner doesn't worry about droughts drying up his pond either.

Eastland -- you're having the same problem I have in my teaching! It's so hard to generalize. For example, the western SD ponds frequently dry due to drought, while the eastern SD ponds rarely do. However, eastern ponds are much more likely to winterkill (more snow, longer period of cold, thicker ice, etc.). Even in a single state such as ours, we range from little precipitation in the west (12 inches annual average) to more than 30 inches in the southeast. Winters are much more mild in the west than east. And so on.......

Dave,
Thanks for the paper, it's states pretty much what I had thought. I was wondering if anyone knows of any studies with Walleye and YP for Crappie control, I know they work well with BG.

Dave :

You have my email address. I would like one when you have time.

Eastland that is a very interesting PB article. Many things in it to think about. Note that in the end it is a LMB predator and LMB forage pond. Most everything else has been eaten w/o the BG. In that situation I think I would go with adding the BG and adding coldwater predators ( YP , Musky , pike, W-eyes) to keep them cropped down to avoid stunting.

Dave, I would like to get a copy of this paper also.

Thanks, Norm

Thought I would add some info from a 2006 study from Ohio. More interesting points.

Predicting Crappie Recruitment in Ohio Reservoirs with
Spawning Stock Size, Larval Density,
and Chlorophyll Concentrations

DAVID B. BUNNELL*1
R. SCOTT HALE
MICHAEL J. VANNI
ROY A. STEIN

Abstract.�Stock�recruit models typically use only spawning stock size as a predictor of recruitment to
a fishery. In this paper, however, we used spawning stock size as well as larval density and key environmental
variables to predict recruitment of white crappies Pomoxis annularis and black crappies P. nigromaculatus,
a genus notorious for variable recruitment. We sampled adults and recruits from 11 Ohio reservoirs and larvae
from 9 reservoirs during 1998�2001. We sampled chlorophyll as an index of reservoir productivity and
obtained daily estimates of water elevation to determine the impact of hydrology on recruitment. Akaike�s
information criterion (AIC) revealed that Ricker and Beverton�Holt stock�recruit models that included
chlorophyll best explained the variation in larval density and age-2 recruits. Specifically, spawning stock
catch per effort (CPE) and chlorophyll explained 63�64% of the variation in larval density. In turn, larval
density and chlorophyll explained 43�49% of the variation in age-2 recruit CPE. Finally, spawning stock CPE
and chlorophyll were the best predictors of recruit CPE (i.e., 74�86%). Although larval density and
recruitment increased with chlorophyll, neither was related to seasonal water elevation. Also, the AIC
generally did not distinguish between Ricker and Beverton�Holt models. From these relationships, we
concluded that crappie recruitment can be limited by spawning stock CPE and larval production when
spawning stock sizes are low (i.e., CPE , 5 crappies/net-night). At higher levels of spawning stock sizes,
spawning stock CPE and recruitment were less clearly related. To predict recruitment in Ohio reservoirs,
managers should assess spawning stock CPE with trap nets and estimate chlorophyll concentrations. To
increase crappie recruitment in reservoirs where recruitment is consistently poor, managers should use
regulations to increase spawning stock size, which, in turn, should increase larval production and recruits to
the fishery.

Stock blue or flathead catfish to control stunted crappie

Gambusia, unfortunately blue and flathead catfish will eat everything and not just concentrate on crappie. Since LMB have a longer and thinner body shape, there is a good chance they will be the first to go. Thanks for comming up with ideas though.

Many thanks Dave, your doc contains a lot of info to digest. It takes several passes to pick up on the correlations and findings, thank you...I enjoy reading and rereading it

Eastland -- that's a point with which I always struggle. How much is enough information, and how much is too much? Sometimes, the technical writing gets darn technical!

Amen to that especially the genetics articles. :rolleyes:

I have recently fished in 2 small ponds near my house with crappie in them with intentions of putting crappie in one of my ponds.

In one pond, the fish are good eating size and the bass have been as long as about 1 ft. Fun to catch but no trophy bass that I can tell. However, at one time there were 2 flathead catfish in there and although I have no idea how often this pond is fished or has fish taken out, I think the 2 catfish that used to be there kept the crappie from taking over.

In the other pond, I don't know how often it is fished or had fish taken out either but I filled up my bucket in no time with 6-7" crappie. Fun to catch and I caught 1 good sized bream. But it was obvious to me these crappie really need to be thinned out more often.

Finally, I really believe if you keep just about all the crappie you catch out of a farm pond, unless it is 6" or so, and if you fish it on a regular basis instead of once or twice a year you can have a pond where you and your friends can have a good time catching fish.

There's a pond I fish at and it has alot of big bass and bream in it, but the pond owner stocked about 15 black and wihite crappie (about 5 in.each) in it...will the bass control the crappie or will the crappie just take over the pond? Any answers will help!

Depending on pond size and cover, 15 small crappie will probably be eaten by the bass. If a few lucky ones survive and spawn, there probably won't be enough babies to saturate by sheer force of numbers, which is what they need for their spawns to succeed. With ideal luck and cover, they could be a problem in as little as 3-4 years. That's just my guess based on personal observations.

Ok thank you, I do think most of them got ate, because I went fishing there yesterday with a marabou jig and didn't catch anything.