Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations C---! I got Crappie

For the past 2 years I have been trying to rehabilitate a 3 acre retention pond in North Florida. I keep trying to take out as many small LMB as I can & add structure & vegetation for small fish. The RWs are still averaging 75% with most all caught LMB in the 11-14" range. I do see a few at 80% now. The fishing effort to catch each LMB has increased. The number of small CNBG observed has increased. Goal, a somewhat balanced & productive pond CNBG/LMB.

Last night I caught an 11" Crappie the first in 30 years that I have ever seen in the pond. Bucket stock? Trash fish from previous professional stocking? A breeding population? Honestly, not being much of a fisherman I did not know what it was. The fish was returned to the pond. Now that I know what it was, I wonder if I did the right thing? What should I do moving forward? Remove all I catch? Don't worry they will never be a problem in a 3 acre pond. I don't really care, as long a they never become a problem in the pond.

JE I’m in the minority here about crappie, I have them and want them but have trouble keeping them due to multiple factors, the bass eat most of them, the blue gill keep them from spawning and weather issues during the spring. I started removing LMB of all sizes and BG to take that part out of the equation. What crappie are in there are 13-14” and this spring I think (hope) that they spawned but won’t know till offspring get 5” long and can catch them. The ones I’m catching are very healthy looking. Long as you monitor their progress and they don’t get to many and scrawny I would think you would be Ok but that’s from someone who wants them over bass. By the way I have some very large LMB in pond (10# plus) that can and will take a 8-9” crappie off your line and eat it. Just my opinion though. Good luck

Definitely do NOT beat yourself up about returning a single crappie!

Who knows about the population, any one of your speculations could be the correct answer.

If you read the guidance by the state agencies for stocking small ponds from the South through the Midwest, they almost uniformly state not to stock crappie in small pond. They imply that the crappie will take over the pond and get stunted.

However, in reading the people on Pond Boss that have managed their family's small ponds for many years, there are very few examples of ponds where crappie have taken over and ruined the fishery.

I definitely do not know the correct answer, but personally I believe that it would be very difficult for crappie to take over a pond that has a huge population of small, underfed LMB.

Keep on sampling your pond. If you start catching more crappie, and of different sizes, then perhaps you do have a breeding population. At that point I am sure the experts will be more than happy to help you modify your management practices as needed.

Have fun improving your 3-acre pond!

Could have gotten there in a lot of ways. And, other than killing everything and starting over, they are there. I wouldn’t worry about it. According to Lusk, over 95% of the eggs laid, hatched, etc don’t live long enough to breed.

Oh pshaw! It was a white crappie & not a Black.

I consider that a blessing if you want crappie. I have all blacks and am having problems getting them to spawn and have some recruitment.It’s been over 10 years and struggling to get any recruitment at all . Least with white crappie they are supposed to have a lot more eggs. I was thinking of acquiring some but you can’t buy them you have to catch them and try to replant them

[quote=FishinRod]
1. Definitely do NOT beat yourself up about returning a single crappie!



2. If you read the guidance by the state agencies for stocking small ponds from the South through the Midwest, they almost uniformly state not to stock crappie in small pond. They imply that the crappie will take over the pond and get stunted.

3. However, in reading the people on Pond Boss that have managed their family's small ponds for many years, there are very few examples of ponds where crappie have taken over and ruined the fishery.



4. Keep on sampling your pond. If you start catching more crappie, and of different sizes, then perhaps you do have a breeding population. At that point I am sure the experts will be more than happy to help you modify your management practices as needed.

[quote]

1. absolutely!

2. The science and experience for many years confirm this is good advice.

3. # 2 above is why # 3 is true. The vast majority of pond owners follow this advice and don't stock crappie in small waters therefore you don't hear about the problem much.

4. Agree - sound advice !

Don’t ever return a crappie to the water.

Dave don’t ever return a green sunfish to the water.
See how that sounds……

Dang Pat, that’s heresy. My favorite fish that will outfight a bigger bluegill every time.

My small pond a mile from the house, about 40+ years old, is now nothing but greens. And I didn’t stock them. They just evolved.

That’s the way it felt to me. I don’t have any greenies but wouldn’t mind cause you right about them just a little misplaced about my craphappys. lol

If you are as good at catching crappie as Pat is ... and if you care most about having crappie ... then preserving a few to spawn and raise some younguns' is a very prudent thing to do. If you care most about LMB, you don't need BCP, so maybe not stock 'em. But that said, having BCP hasn't prevented Pat from growing LMB as big as anyone else. Go figure.

There is no one rule it seems.

Was digging through an old paper on 42 ponds that were sampled by total kill in OK. 62% of the ponds had Crappie. Crappie had one of the lowest A factors. This stands for percentage of population that is harvestable size. But the bar was higher than for lepomis. The authors defined lepomis harvestable at 0.10 lbs ... whereas ... for Crappie ... harvestable was defined as .25 lbs. So two and 1/2 times the weight of BG for example. What gives? Both are panfish, if lepomis are harvestable at 0.10 lbs ... why wouldn't the same apply to crappie?

I looked at the balance of ponds with Crappie. Guess what? They tended to be better balanced than the ponds without them. A_t, the factor representing the biomass percentage of harvestable fish was lowest among the ponds without Crappie ... averaging 31.8% of the biomass. Ponds with crappie averaged 42.7% of the biomass. So Crappie actually seemed to help balance. Of the ponds with low A_t's there was a recurring theme ... a very low (even non-existent) population of LMB and/or a very high population of black bullhead. When A_t is plotted against Crappie Biomass/acre the correlation if very loosely fitted (but a negative correlation). The R^2 was much too low to be considered the cause of low A_t for the group. OTOH, when A_t was plotted against LMB biomass/acre, the fit was much better and positively correlated. The R^2 was 50 times higher than Crappie and LMB biomass/acre could explain about 30% of the variation of At. I suspect that if they had reported LMB individuals/acre that this metric would better explain A_t than LMB biomass.

Anyways, in the end, a couple of the ponds (around 8%) exhibited what we fear will happen if crappie are stocked. Crappie comprised a large percentage of the biomass and the A_t was very low indicating these ponds had large populations of stunted crappie (less than 8"). Both of these ponds had no LMB. Just evaluating the ponds with low A_t and LMB biomass percentages of less than 6% of the biomass. These summed to a Crappie total weight 787 lbs ... close to half of the total weight of all crappie in all ponds. So if on a total population basis, only 33% are bigger than 0.25 lbs, That's pretty doggone good considering half of weight of them and more than half of the number of them came from ponds where LMB comprised less than 6% of the biomass.

What happened to the LMB that they only comprised such small percentages of the biomass in such a large percentage of the ponds? Not clear. But a few possible causes. First, possible over-harvest of LMB in a low recruitment environment. Second, possible interspecies interaction between Crappie and LMB that inhibits LMB recruitment. Third, possible interspecies interaction between Black Bullhead and LMB that inhibits LMB recruitment. Whatever the reason for those low LMB biomass densities, poor balance was more a problem of under-representation of LMB than it was over-representation of Crappie.

Jpsdad I ain’t that good a catching them critters or raising them either. Been 10 years and haven’t culled any BCP for eating. This is the first year that some were big enough to filet but let them go to maybe spawn… they were 12-13” long and full of eggs. Last year caught 25 out of neighbors pond and put in mine….. don’t know if they were the ones from neighbors pond or not but they were fatties. We will see this fall as if they did pull off a spawn they should be 4-5” long….

I think you are better at fishing for crappie than you are letting on. But that is OK, I like modesty. Some people think crappie are hard to catch. But by and large, my experience has been just the opposite. One of the differences in my experience is that I have fished small lakes primarily and water levels do not fluctuate a lot. Crappie replenished and they were abundant. Anyways, in my experience, the key to catching crappie is getting a jig close enough to one that he will try to keep his neighbors from getting it before him. I have successfully fished for crappie in all months of the year. I have had great fishing in January. I have also had great fishing throughout the summer either trolling to locate them during daylight hours or fishing for them at night under a light using big hexagenia mayfly tipped jigs. Of course, spring fishing is fantastic. I have caught 1000s of crappie and I have never released any of them (no matter how small or large). In those waters, it's good to keep everyone of them. In yours, right now, not so IMO. One has to apply a little common sense and there is no need to fix an overpopulation of BCP when there isn't one (in your case an underpopulation because you would like more).

The good news is that if you do get good reproduction and recruit too many 1.5 year olds ... they are not hard to catch and they are dang good to eat. You could catch them year-round to keep them in check. Anyways, hope you do get some into the 5" range this fall. They are still vulnerable at that size to 15" or longer LMB. How many that grow up will depend on how many make it through those sizes of LMB.

Here’s hoping that I have to cull! It’s going to be a wait and see thing.