Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - BCP MANAGEMENT IDEAS

Ok guys lets get this party started! This should be very helpful to the folks that love crappie.
My crappie have been in the pond for 1 year now. They were 4-5" and now are around 9-12" long . Does that sound normal at this point? They don't seem to be thin.

Pat W

Caught a few BCP on jigs at night in 7’ water beyond solar light

One was over a pound at least and the others were 3/4 lb or so . All nice fish. Hope they spawned. Aught to get some minnows. Also caught large BG at that same depth. Hauled the Bg off to a neighbors pond, several were over a pound couldn’t get hand around them to remove hook

Not sure there is an easy or scientific way to tell, as they do swim out to open water, or seem to, one seldom sees yoy from BC, and it seems like you seldom catch small ones that are from the most recent spawn.

I know Ive been really curious for the last yr, wondering if they had a decent spawn last yr because I couldnt afford enough to fully stock my pond, due to the fact that I had to buy bigger ones to keep the LMB that had a couple yrs on them to not eat them all as snacks.
I was happy to find a few pretty good sized schools of them in the brush and landed several of them that were about 5" long, I assume last yrs hatch.

At night they seem to like to hang in the fringes of lighting in the water. Fun to see the tell tale "tick" telegraph up the line when they inhale a jig. Good times.

What sizes did you catch last night?

I’ve also been very curious about how they do their thing and why about 5-6” is the size you catch a few at a time. Last year I put some 12-13” ones that I caught from my neighbors pond that when there was a lot in my pond before the LMB et them . Maybe they will get busy

I have heard of people building a floating raft out of wood and plastic barrels that had a reinforced cutout that was similar to a "transom". They put an electric trolling motor on it with a battery to help them do work in the pond.........

That’s good on paper but finding BCP that size is not available around here. Same thing with big shiners. I have been removing all bass to neighbors pond along with large BG. Haven’t made a dent on BG. Since pond is full and we had a normal temp spring maybe they got off a spawn. There is a lot more weeds around the shoreline that maybe the pelagic babies will have ahidey place to not get eaten. I didn’t fish for large LMB this spring. So I’m not sure how many jumbos are left in there. Did catch 5 CC yesterday up to 10# and gave to a neighbor so that’s 25+-# of fish removed, plus a few 2-3# LMB for neighbors fish tacos….. all good. Will try to obtain large BCP……

Pat,

Brush has worked very well for me to concentrate Crappie for fishing. I think as means for increasing recruitment the effect may be less than we imagine.

It's not clear to me why you are not recruiting. There are lots of choke points that could be affecting BCP recruitment. The first is bedding and swim up. If BCP nests are overcome with predation of eggs and hatch fry, then a bottom up approach may fail to get recruitment of free swimmers in sufficient quantity to recruit in desired numbers. It will take a couple of years to grow to invulnerable lengths. If there are not enough of them reaching 2" lengths to survive all that predation ... poor recruitment will result.

I think your best chance will be supplement stock larger sizes of BCP fingerling. My analysis for 24" LMB, is that the optimum prey size of BCP is 5 5/8" long. At this length, they are very attractive prey for LMB of that length and would be very vulnerable to predation. At longer lengths, BCP are less attractive because LMB will fail more frequently than with the optimum length. IOWs, to consume the same amount of energy, they will have to try more times. With 8" BCP, a 24" LMB will have to make 3 times the predatory attempts as they would 5 5/8" BCP to consume equal amounts of energy. So long as more optimum prey is available, LMB behavior will be to concentrate on the more vulnerable ... more optimum prey. Long story short, 8" BCP stand a pretty good chance of surviving to longer lengths and attaining lengths that your 24" LMB cannot consume.

The most vulnerable period will be just following release of 8" fish. Under normal circumstances, a 24" LMB would ignore healthy 8" BCP as prey. But when released into your pond, they will be naive about predators and they will be stressed and/or possibly disoriented. They will be more vulnerable than if they had grown out in your pond. So there could be, (and probably will be), losses over the first 2 or 3 days as they acclimate to the new environment. There are number of ways you could reduce losses during this period. Things I would consider trying ...

1. Acclimate the supplement stocking as recommended by Ewest behind blocking nets for 24 hours.

2. Supplement stock at cooler temperatures when LMB metabolism is lower. For example, an 8" BCP provides 2.34 days' worth of energy at 62F to a 24" LMB. At 78F, it would only provide 1.3 days of sustenance. Lower temperatures increase the handling time giving the supplement stocking more time to acclimate.

3. Co-stock with cheaper but more optimum prey that will be more attractive for consumption and more vulnerable to predation. For example, 5" - 6" GSH. This sacrificial prey could be additionally stressed to make them more vulnerable than they would otherwise be. Just enough to get your BCP through acclimation.

4. Time for vulnerability of your TP (provided temps are high enough to transport your BCP).


I think a recruitment rate of 30 >8" BCP per acre-year would sustain a healthy adult population. At 30% annual mortality, over 5 years of growout, this recruitment rate (combined with mortality) would maintain an adult population of ~83 BCP per acre and a potential standing weight of 100 lbs/acre.

If I were to try this, I would start by trying to establish that 83 BCP/acre population right from the get go. I would supplement 80 or so 8" BCP/acre. Then the following year I would supplement 30 BCP/acre. By the end of 2nd year, if you were able to successfully recruit, you would have 8" BCP recruits some of which you would need to crop.

It's not clear whether you will be able to recruit, but to give yourself the best chance, you will need to protect the adult population until they reach a minimum length or age. This would ensure a good standing weight of adults to give you your best chance at in situ recruitment. If unable to recruit, 30 BCP per acre-year should maintain a fishable population that you can harvest at some minimum length or age.

I agree with jpsdad about deeper brush as the best way to concentrate crappie for fishing.

We knew of two large brushpiles in 20' water of a 400-acre private lake when we were kids. We used to compete on how many consecutive casts you could throw a small jig and land a crappie. For some springs, the winner would be over a dozen in a row.

In both cases the deep brushpile came up to within 5-6' of the surface.

We would occasionally catch crappie off of weed beds or timber along the shoreline, but we mostly caught bass out of the shoreline cover.

Despite the lake being an excellent multi-species fishery, the crappie population would definitely exhibit strong cyclical behavior.

Some years we would catch over 150 crappie that were 4-5" in size with maybe three or four crappie over 10". The lake manager told us to keep all of the little ones to cull them. Then a few years later we would catch fewer crappie, but lots of nice fat ones over 10". The manager would let us keep 5 each of those, and they were very tasty fried up!

I have seen similar results in watershed lakes of 10-50 acres, where we caught lots of bass along the shoreline structure, but caught almost 100% of our crappie on brushpiles in the deeper water near the dam.

I don't know what controlled the crappie recruitment in those situations?

However, I do recommend you establishing some deeper water brushpiles to give you a more reliable method of SAMPLING your crappie population. That should help your management at least a little bit to get some more data points.

P.S. I have caught crappie over "fluffy" brushpiles that were made by cabling cedar trees together. I have also caught them over brushpiles that were created with large tree trunks and essentially zero fluffy component. Something about the cover in an otherwise pelagic environment has always been the best crappie concentrator in my limited experience.