Anyone do much of this? We will be breeding White Crappie next spring followed by training a couple thousand fry in June. I am trying to see how others are doing. Method we have in place is like used for LMB which is not suitable for all.
I am thinking about having a student document a process better suited for actually doing in the fish were bred in. I have done such on a small scale in a recreational fishing pond using low quality feed that certainly could be bettered.
Excellent and thank you! Very much what I am looking for. Anyone currently feeding crappie or planning to do so next year?
I think that would be a very good project to do. I have black crappie in a 5 acre pond, so this is interesting to me. So far after 3 plus years they have not overpopulated, just the opposite
From what I have seen, they are very reliable spawners and it is not hard to find larvae amongst the plankton after the spawning takes place. The bottleneck appears to be whether or not they survive the window where they settle out in the littoral zone and operate much like Bluegill during the first summer of life. It seems to me they have to reach a larger size than Bluegill before odds greatly increase a given fish will recruit into the fishable population. I am betting the cover plants or other structure provides near open water the crappie feed is key. And LMB must of the size that targets the YOY and even age-1 crappie must not be too abundant. The BG are simply more resilient in the face of the predation and may also benefit from the extended breeding season.
Dr.Jim
I don't have much plants around the shore to hide anything. Waterthread came up this spring but has died off for some reason this fall. Not sure how to catch juvenile crappie or to ck if there is any yoy.
One problem identified with crappie and their boom and bust cycle is the tendency to overeat the environment. With the extreme numbers often hatched the yoy can easily overeat the food source. This is especially true in the limited areas they stay in (cover) when very small.
This is the first year that I had plants and plenty of yoy BG. Now that the plants are non existent the LMB are working the BG over. From what I can tell I've had one spawn that was successful the first year. They are 8-9" long. That's the only size that I catch.
Consider providing some deep water structure that is dense enough adult crappie do not have complete access to it.
Have you ever put on a snorkel to see what they are doing?
Have not snorkeled it . Have over an acre of flooded timber and brush so thick that I can't get through it with a boat. It's a creek bed between two hills and about 7-8' deep in the middle
Brush you cannot get through not important to crappie. It must be something bigger fish can not get through yet be close to foraging area.
What you describe is similar to strip mines for coal before reclamation was law of land. Such can be very tough to get through on boat and be scratchy when you swim it yet not provide usable cover for the smaller crappie.
I have spent time watching crappie schools stacked up around cover. They would drift a few feet from it and start engulfing water that critters small enough I could not see them from from 6' away. When a bass would come through the school would pull back into the cover although to my eye not an area that should stop a bass of the size appropriate to catch the crappie. Fliers do the same thing.