I am new to pond boss and would like some help. I have fished for crappie and they are fun to catch and eat. I was hoping to stock them in my pond. I was thinking of stocking minnows ( this fall ) then crappie and largemouth bass. I was wondering if I could use the crappie instead of BG? What would be better smallmouth or largemouth bass? Thanks for your help. I live about 50 miles south of Chicago if that makes a difference as far as the weather?
Welcome to the forum... I am very green on this pond stuff myself, but most say crappie are very hit and miss in small ponds without extensive management..
Others will hopefully be by to explain this with more details..
Hey Hayden,
Putting Crappie in a 1 acre pond would not be something most folks here will tell you to do. Most folks will tell you, you need 15 plus acres to have Crappie. Remeber in a 1 acre pond you really only need 1 predator fish. IE: SMB or LMB. IMO large BG are dang near just as good as Crappie to eat and you can grow them pretty big. I have some 10 inch BG that are nice eating size! And they provie all the forage I need for my LMB it's a win, win situation. Just be careful with the Crappie in a pond that size. It will take it over in a hurry and you will have a bunch of 5 inch Crappie.
RC
There is another Crappie option if you do not want to run the risk of over population. You can same sex the Crappie where they will not reproduce. There was a article in Pond Boss Magazine about doing this in small ponds in the last year. It allows you to have Crappie to catch from time to time in small waters.
I have recently started a 3 ac Black Crappie pond and have not personally went thru all the ends and outs in practice. Here is something you may be interested in that I found in my research about fishing pressure locally. Below is from a previous post I made in April:
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Interesting side note on preparing for fishing for population control. A local 45 acre lake that sustained a nice size and crappie population for years averaged from 66 to 88 angler visits per acre per year with a 9" min size limit. The former manager of the 45 ac lake estimated a annual crappie harvest of near 100 crappie per surface acre. Another lake I done research on avg 92 angler visits per acre per year over 10 years(100 ac lake) and is one of the better crappie lakes in Alabama. Still waiting to here from the state if they can provide me any catch numbers on that lake for those 10 years.
If you know of another lake or pond where you can catch spawning crappies, sexing them in spring is very easy. Pick out the egg laden females as they generally get bigger and are easiest to sex.
If you decide to go the reproducing crappie population route, I would work hard to minimize the amount of cover in your pond.
There is research that HSB can be effective in controlling crappie reproduction. Over populated LMB can also be very effective in controlling crappie numbers. Either way, I would make sure the predatory fish I am stocking to control the crappies had a good head start on the crappies. I would make sure the LMB are at least 10"-12" before crappies were stocked, and/or the HSB were at least 14"-16" before the crappies were stocked... This will allow the predators to effectively prey on crappies born into your pond and not allow them to get too big too fast for your predators to prey on.