Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Crappie a Threat to Walleye in Large Pond?

Hi Folks,

Well, thanks in large part to your enthusiasm, help, and expert advice, my wife and my plans for our main BOW in the North Carolina mountains coalesces more and more. At first we were thinking single-species crappie, and that is still up there, but the suggestion of needing a predator brought us to the interesting possibility of walleye. After doing some reading, I believe that if the lake is constructed well, particularly with lots of stone of different sizes and a gravel bar reaching up to 3 feet from the surface out towards the middle where wave action can keep it clean, we can get a self-sustaining population of walleye.

One thing that is stressed, though, is that walleye young are very vulnerable, and given the reputation crappie have as an unstoppable tidal wave of predation in ponds, it seems to me that they might prevent the walleye from successfully reproduction, while a lake with a large forage base (crawfish, fathead minnows, golden shiners, emerald shiners, common shiners, spottail shiners, redbelly dace, etc.) with walleye as the only predator/gamefish species might do extremely well.

Walleye are such a cool fish we might even forgo crappie completely if it means we can have a good, catchable population of eating-size walleye.

Do y'all think crappie would be a threat, or can these two coexist in a large pond (5-10 acres) with lots of stone and cold deep water? It is, of course, ideal for there to be both species in there, but if we could have a big surplus of walleye, we'd sacrifice crappie for that. Heck, if we have enough walleye in the big lake, we could have a smaller pond for crappie and control stunting there by transferring some of our catch of large walleye into the crappie pond.

I look forward to hearing what y'all think, and thanks in advance

Don't know specifically about WE and crappie. I'd be concerned that the WE would never be able to control BCP population [if LMB can't do it, it's extremely unlikely that WE will be able to], and that BCP would not represent very good WE forage in any event.

Based on multiple members experience with WE, likelihood of a self sustaining population in a pond is not high. Not saying it can't be done, but I wouldn't count on it.

Having said that, you could just stock a certain number of juvenile WE every year, and create an excellent environment for YP, which would be great eating AND excellent forage for WE, and much less likely to overwhelm your pond and become a management issue, unlike crappie. I think the WE are a great idea, FWIW, they're about my favorite pond fish at this point.

Our first plan was Black crappy, walleye, and yellow perch. After reading allot on here and what ever I could get my hands on for reading we chose to go with yellow perch only for now.

I hope to add walleye this spring from some left overs.

The key factors is the timing of each species spawn, and the preferred size/shape the predator fish will take.

Black crappie spawn at 50-56* fat pan marker shape.
Many many can live from spawn. Spawn very well in ponds.

Yellow perch spawn at 45-52* pencil shape.
Many can live but can be eaten by large minnow bait adults. Spawn well in ponds.

Walleye spawn at 44-48* pencil shape.
Poor pond spawn but will. Fry are easy to eat when they do hatch limiting recruitment.

Sooo I have talked my self into yellow perch only and adding walleye later as a bonus fish and keep many perch from over populating with the hopes to harvest larger perch. We are using pellet trained perch and that really helps with a very large forage base.

I would lover to add black crappie but I am afraid of the possible problems with recruitment and over population. We did stock common shiners and emerald shiners. They too can over populate as well but rarely out grow depredation.

Cheers Don.

Don, with the shiners in there, are you seeing much recruitment that you need an apex predator?