Just did the pond last year. its about 3/4 acre. Its 4ft in shallow end and goes down to 18-20 in deep end. Its still murky, and runoff fed. I originally just had some perch put in and about 2000 FHM. A friend of mine caught and put in about 25 what he called Calico bass. I am learning now they are called "crappies" what do I do, they were put in within the last 3 months. The only thing in their are the 25 Crappies and about 15 caught perch. I do not want to end up with a pond full of stunted 5-6 inch crappies. My father in law screwed up the order with his BG and LMB. He now has a million BG and very small bass. I am trying to avoid this!
Kill em all.. Start over.. Plain and simple..
Is this your pond??? If so why is someone else putting anything into it? Friend or not no one but ME manages my pond. Otherwise you have things happen just like you stated above. It's going to be tuff to get rid of all 25 of them without killing out your pond like BK said. Even if you catch 20 of them it only takes 2 in that small of a pond to get going and in a year or 2 your in trouble.
Good Luck my friend,
Its ok he put them in there, he built it. He just didnt know better. He has them in his pond and loves to catch them and them. I just dont want to have a million of them. Dont you need a mass reproducing fish like BG or these to maintain LMB? Im not killing everything so any other ideas?
Hey GL,
Oh it's his pond ok then! Well fish like crazy for them and try to get them out of there. Here is a good link for you to read on crappie. Maybe it will help. I am no expert on it for sure.
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.ph...0&site_id=1
RC51, yeh its on my property but he uses heavy EQ for a living. Man he built me one beautiful pond. Its on here under my name and "my new pond" I just talked to him a little while ago, this was his take on it. He said he loves crappie for table fare, so he put them in his pond. Along with a bunch of LMB. He said his pond rule is any 10" or less bass and all crappie caught get pulled out and eaten. Any bass bigger gets caught for fun and put back in. He said he has some monster bass in his 3/4 acre pond and a ton of crappie. He said we pull a bucket of the crappie out here and there and I sit by the fire filleting them and frying them. The big bass eat a lot of the crappie and small bass, he eats a lot of crappie and samll bass, and nobody eats the big bass..He was just trying to set mine up the same way. He is a country boy who lives out there. I am a city boy who bought land and usually does everything the hard way because I dont listen well the first time and think I know better!
Crappie can be managed by allowing lots of small bass to be present, although with crappie it takes extra effort, usually a lot of extra effort to always monitor and remove appropriate numbers and sizes to keep crappie from becoming overabundant. A little luck and proper habitat always help grow good balanced crappie populations. Make no mistake, it is dificult. Over time and with lax management crappie very often overpopulate as noted below. Lots of info here about successfully and unsuccessfully growing crappie.
Read through and study this. Ask queations if needed.
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92447#Post92447
I would leave all bass over 8".. Never throw a crappie back or a bluegill.. Also stock some more larger bass.. I didn't say kill everything to be sarcastic or an a$$.. It's just alot easier to start over now rather than years from now..
Another thing crappie will compete with your bass for forage and in time will out compete bass because they breed better.(crappie that is)
I've fished alot of crappie farmponds in my time.. After so many years they all stunt.. Unless you do major management..
If a pond rule is to keep all 10" LMB and bigger, wont the bigger bass do some good management on the crappie numbers? From everything I have read LMB need a fast reproducer to keep their food intake up. Would an adult LMB have any problem eating a mature crappie? The crappies dont look as wide as bluegill per se. Isnt that the reason many people stock blue gill because they feed the bass population? I have no blue gill in it, wouldnt the crappie act like the blue gill most put in their ponds for LMB? What am I missing?
Your missing the breeding factor of crappie compared to bluegill also crappie will eat small bass unlike or less likely with BG.... Also a 8" bass could eat alot of 2-3" crappie so leaving the 8"+ would benefit you more in removing more smaller crappies..
Honestly you should leave all bass to control crappie..
Just my opinion..
greenL - you are also missing that crappie even small crappie eat, if available, mostly small fish, thus crappie make a very poor forage fish and crappie compete for food with other fish eaters. Not so much true as with BG types - similar to what BGkiller states.
True - Larger bass will eat a mature crappie. But note, crappie are similar to BG in that they can mature at a small or larger or in-between sizes depending on size structure of the population and available food. Small bass will eat more numbers of crappie per year compared to a large bass providing a normal crappie population size structure is present. The wise rationale is to try and get as many crappie out of the community as fast as possible, so remaining fish have more food and less competition and better growth results. Amount of available food and inter & intraspecific competition are very important factors for producing quality fisheries.
Gotcha. Well at the very least I am going to make a pond rule that bass are to be released and are for fun fishing only. We will pull all the crappie out we fish and eat them. Over the last few weeks we have caught a bunch at a friends pond and they were 6-7 inches, but boy there were good eatin! Also, my friend who built my pond has a real small pond(if u could even call it a pond) that he uses for minnow production only. He has a few pallets in it, feeds them store bought forage, and lets them reproduce. Then a couple a times a year he drains half of it and dumps a ton of these minnows in his pond. He says it is helping his fish grow well, what do you guys think of this to my scenario? He has a backhoe, be an easy pond to set up...
If you have crappie, I see having the extra minnow pond as a good idea and good technique. It would also be a good way to get minnows for crappie bait, although in a bas dense pond, you are likely to catch as many bass as crappie. Good fishing. Keep us informed as to your experiences with those crappie.
good to hear, well thats the plan for now. I have read an aweful lot on this awesome forum. I know many are against crappie in a pond, but it may just work for our purpose. we like to eat fish, and I have twin 5 yr olds that get bored easy so pullin em out quickly is good for them. We have a plan, so ill see how it works. My buddy always says, hey if your pond gets over populated we'll just drop in a few northern pike for a couple months...ugh..
Northern pike will not be the answer for overcrowded crappie. LMB will be much better and effective at eating lots of crappie compared to pike. Pike are toothy but prefer to eat slender bodied soft rayed fish, although they will also eat quite a few slender bodied LMB which defeats your purpose of having lots of predators for crappie. In your case, I suggest you consider NP only as a bonus fish.
Bill I was only kidding, I would never put a NP in my pond. I wouldn't even swim in there let alone my kids. You see the teeth on those things!!! Im gonna stick to the above poat. Im gonna try and fish a lot of the crappie out for tablefare and leave the big bass in there.
Why couldn't gl throw in some HSB to help in managing his crappie population. I have read that hsb do a great job especially when there is limited cover in a pond and when the yoy crappie are using open water to avoid predatation from lmb?
There have been studies showing HSB may very well be a moderately effective predator on YOY crappie.
In such a small pond, how about a small catfish population??
Channels are more abundant, but what about throughing in just one or two blue cats?? And how about a few female tiger muskie, as there size capabilities and willing to eat what is avaliable.
I would make another trip with the perch to get that population going good. i am also a big fan of GS. Now would be the time to stock them..
Have you added any cover or such?
Grammpa's pond has white crappie, LMB, and a forage of FHM, GS, Eroupean RUDD (nusians species but very good forage, and saddly a few bull head, It was stocked over 30 years ago and does not get fished enough. it is bass heavy, with the occacianal crappie that comes out healthy. Some years the bass are big heads and some years they all seem healthy. Occasionly Ill catch a 12" Rudd or Shiner too.
right now I have a 40' tree in there from about 6' deep going down to 15' deep. The a bunch of hand made cement bucket pvc houses I sank all over the place for habbitat. Im not sure though if I put those in the right area, they are down in the deep end/ 20 ft area. I also have several plastic pallets sunk in the 3-4ft shallow end.
I replied on the other post that duplicates this one.
thank you, I read it. its hard when one person asks a similar question to which I have a question about as well in another area of the forum. If that makes sense???
Haven't commented on here for a while but this thread prompts me to add an update on how my crappie are doing since it might help the OP. As many of you know I made the same "mistake" of putting crappie in my 3/4 acre pond with HBG and LMB. It's been 9 years now since the crappie and HBG were stocked and 6 years since the bass. Remember my growth rates are affected by living in MN. I have managed the pond by limiting my HBG eaters to those that are 1/2 to 1 pound, no bass have been taken out until recently, I remove all crappie I can below 5 inches length, few larger crappie have been taken out. I also occasionally stock large numbers of minnows. Here's what I have in my pond today:
My HBG population has dropped to about half of what it was in the early days but I stocked quite heavy (1000 fish), I still have 3 or 4 year classes of HBG in the pond including one year olds, just not as many total fish, I have quite a few HBG around 2 pounds. In the past 5 years I have eaten around 400 HBG. I can almost always catch edible sized HBG for a meal.
As soon as I started seeing YOY crappie or anything under 5 inches I removed them any way I could including trapping. I had a lot of small ones for a while. I have not eaten many crappie from the pond bacause I only stocked 100 fish and wanted the larger ones to continue to grow. I had to actively remove fish for about 4 years but recently was able to stop as they seem to have disappeared. I currently have around 3 year classes of crappie in the pond, some 6 inchers, some 10 inchers, and some 15 inchers. At times I can catch all the 10 inchers I would want and thus have eaten about 30 of these.
The disappearance of the small crappie seemed to correspond with my bass getting larger. I only stocked 6 bass and now my largest bass are up to around 18 inches and I rarely find a small crappie. I seem to have a lot of bass around 10 to 12 inches long. In the spring I see large schools of YOY bass in the pond. As summer progresses they disappear.
I rarely find a minnow in my pond. Even though I have three times stocked 2000 to 4000 minnows they just disappear. I have now also stocked a separate forage pond with several types of minnows that I intend to start moving to the fish pond as forage.
Time will tell whether my crappie were really a mistake. Up until 2 years ago I could catch all the HBG within my slot limit that I cared to eat. About that time I started getting some nice 1.5 pound crappie. It's harder to get a meal of HBG lately but I can still get them if I want them. The hardest part about catching the HBG is that I think they've become educated since I have my best luck when trying something new. I can also at times get all the crappie I want. Recently caught about 50 crappie in the 10 inch range within 2 hours. As mentioned I can quite easily catch some HBG up to 2 pounds and some crappie up to 15 to 16 inches. Since my smaller crappie have disappeared I have changed my bass management this year to include removal of all fish caught that are over about 2 pounds. My intent is to get rid of the original 6 stocked bass.
So far I'm still happy with my results. I have friends over to fish and we have a meal of medium HBG plus they each catch a few trophy class HBG and Crappie.
That's my story.
Thanks for sharing your experiences bz! I'd love to see some photos of your fish, they sound quite impressive!
bz with 2 pound HBG and 15" crappie I'd say your doing something right.
As CJ said, let's see some photo's.
Nice fish. Yeah, you're doing a lot of things right.
So this gives some of us hope, if we are willing to put in the work, only time will tell if my Crappie pulled off as well, I think many if not all were eaten by the GSF that were in the pond, but I am sure at least 2 made it and you know what that means.
Anyway thanks for the update.
Great crappie. They are excellent eating.
How do you make pvc/5 gallon cement bucket houses? What run through my head was greasing a pvc/5 gallon cement bucket and stack cross crossing length of foam squares that run inside from one side of the bucket to the other, then pouring cement over it all. Then soaking the cement cast with gasoline to eat out the plastic cavities.
Thanks all, but I didn't really post here to get kudos on the fish but rather with the hopes that whatever I'm doing right can be used by someone else. My pond evolves every year. Each year it is interesting to see what happens next.
Regarding the cement houses, might be better just to heat it all up and melt the foam out. If you use the styrene bead foam it will burn out quite easily with a little fire. Otherwise me thinks the gasoline will soak into the cement and polute the pond somewhat.
Use balloons. Pop 'em and you're done.
wow, what an amazing story. I am so pleased to see a "crappie" success story. I am gonna give it a shot. I hope with the addition of a feeder pond and the removal of crappie to eat as well as catch and release bass I can manage this also. Thanks foor sharing and the pics too.
That massive hbg would look great on
www.bigbluegill.com. (hint, hint)
Thanks all, but I didn't really post here to get kudos on the fish but rather with the hopes that whatever I'm doing right can be used by someone else. My pond evolves every year. Each year it is interesting to see what happens next.
bz, you took the thoughts right out of my head. Being retired, I walk the pond many times a day looking for the slightest changes and wondering what the pond will show me the following year. What's fascinating is that about the time you think you have it figured out, you don't.
Yes J. Monroe, I walk around mine at least twice a day and always spend my morning "coffee" time sitting on the dock and watching the fish feed. It's been fascinating to watch it develop. It truly is a living, breathing ecosystem.
I built a 7 acre pond 3 years ago. Stocked it with Fat Head Minnows, Copper Nose BG, Channel Cat fingerlings, and was waiting to stock my Large Mouth Bass when I discovered that the pond had Green sunfish and crappie in it (don't know how these got in there) With my plan ruined I decided to try something. I bought 85 one to three pound bass from Insleys Fish Farm, along with 250 six inch fingerlings. My hope was that the large fish would predate the crappie and GS. So far it appears my plan is working as I have not caught a green sunfish or crappie this year so far. I know they are still in there but I think in manageable numbers. I have a good population of CNBG and recently two 5 pound bass. I realized that the large bass were doing their job one day when I had caught a small crappie, and a large bass hit it while I was reeling it in. It is an expensive solution, but it beats waiting for growth. I also feed my bass, since they were raised on feed, they will grow an extra pound a year. It is a fun sight to watch when I throw the feed off my dock.
