Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Giant Crappie

I was recently at a fishing show at the Arlington convention center and had stopped to talk to a crappie fishing guide. He guides for crappie on Lake Fork in East Texas under the name Pappys Guide Service. I asked him if the giant crappie that he had mounted were from Lake Fork. He smiled and said that the Lake Fork record was less than three pounds and all of the fish he had mounted were over three pounds. So can you guess my next question? Where did you catch those fish? He said all of the giant crappie he catches are from farm ponds. He said many of the farm ponds he fishes are less than an acre. I thought crappie didn't do well in small ponds? Can someone explain how this is possible. My first guess is that you would have to have a strong predator base to keep the numbers down and yet you would also have to have a strong forage base to keep the existing crappie growing at a high rate. I do know that this area of Texas grows not only very large bass but also very large bluegill and now I know very large crappie.

Good question, James. Almost all of the state records for black crappies and white crappies from Midwestern states came from farm ponds. However, I remember that an old study by the Central States Pond Management Work Group actually went out and tracked down some of those records (I don't know if I could find documentation for this or not). Anyway, many of those ponds were not even managed for crappies, and in some cases, the owners didn't even know that crappies were present. Generally, the ponds had an overabundance of small largemouth bass that really cropped down the crappie reproduction. This is probably not all of the story, but I think it's an important tidbit in understanding crappies in ponds.

Practically every pond I've ever managed had crappie in it, and I found some things to be fairly constant.

In most of the ponds the crappie were high density, with lots of 7-8 inch fish present. In the other ponds, however, there were much smaller numbers of crappie, but with individuals from 13-16 inches. When ever we would bring these bigger fish home to filet we would invariably find small bluegill in their stomachs regardless of whether they were white or black crappie. These ponds with bigger crappie also had, as Dr. Dave mentioned, very high numbers of lean and mean largemouth. I'll briefly describe a typical days fishing at these two types of ponds.

1. High density; small size

Thirty fish per hour angling with following size distribution:

26 crappie between 7 and 8 inches.
4 crappie about 9.5 inches


2. Low density; larger size

Five fish per hour angling with following size distribution:

One 6 inch crappie
One 9 inch crappie
Two 12 inch crappie
One 14 inch crappie


Evidently there's some recruitment, but not enough to create lots of competition.

By the way, the bluegill do much better in the pond with low density of crappie (duh!) ;).

Bruce have you ever tried to raise crappie in a small pond? One of the places that I buy bluegill has crappie in their spawning pond. The owner told me that they have never been able to remove all of the crappie from the pond by seining and so they have to hand sort the crappie out when they catch the bluegill. Once crappie are established they must really be hard to get rid of if you wanted to do so.

From the archive Crappie Pond : http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthread...0228#Post102131

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=62543&fpart=1

Southeastern Pond Management reports in its client newsletter excellent success (so far) with Crappie in Southern ponds. This is the same company that one of our PB Convention speakers (Dr. Jeff Slipke) works for. He also provided the PB Forum through Dave Willis info on SMB in Southern ponds. The newsletter contains an article on that as well.

Back to the article on Crappie. With research from reservoirs on HSB feeding they found what we know that the HSB ate a lot of TShad. They also found that HSB eat a lot of young crappie. With that info they decided to try that application on some test ponds. They started with a clean pond and added TShad , GShiners and FH in the fall. The next spring they stocked BC fingerlings followed by HSB in the fall. Over the next 4 years they saw fast growth among the crappie with little crappie recruitment. No sign of the usual problems with crappie in ponds. They then created more ponds like the first and report that electrofishing results are very promising - slab crappie with no overpopulation and - yes the HSB are doing well. A pic of one of the HSB appears to be about 8 lbs. A pic of one of the crappie looks to be about 1.5 to 2 lbs.

Update - additional info on this idea -

North American Journal of Fisheries Management
Fish Community Response to Hybrid Striped Bass Introduction in Small Warmwater Impoundments
J. Wesley Neal*, Richard L. Noble, and James A. Rice


Results from this study suggest hybrid striped bass may have consumed enough small black crappies to prevent overpopulation without eliminating recruitment. However, further study is warranted using a larger number of ponds and differing conditions. If these results can be replicated, enhancing crappie fisheries while simultaneously creating a hybrid striped bass fisheries would be a favorable alternative to complete pond reclamation.

My observations have been almost identical to Bruce's. There have been a few exceptions where I sampled (ef boat) and/or caught (angled) large crappie in ponds having low densities of largemouth bass. I'm specifically talking about ponds that received very little angling/harvest pressure. However, these situations almost always had terrible water clarity. I deduced that the mechanisms helping to maintain low crappie numbers (but large sizes) in these ponds were related to inefficient spawning due to turbidity. In these scenarios, the bass were also having recruitment problems. The largest crappie I sampled with an electrofishing boat was 18.4". It was a white crappie that lived in a pond that resembled chocolate milk. I should have killed it and taken its otolith for age analysis. It had to be old (really old). Growth would have had to have been slow due to the low numbers of all fish in the pond (not much prey).

The take home message is to fish ponds that you normally wouldn't give the time of day. The catch per hour will probably be slow, but you never know if the pond holds a true trophy.

Like Dr. Willis mentioned, there are a lot of ponds out there whose owners don't even know crappie exist in them. Generally speaking, most ponds with crappie end-up getting overrun- with the end result being lots of small-sized crappie.

If you just wanted to grow some big crappie for the purpose of potentially producing a trophy, then I would introduce a few fish of the same sex and then let them grow. Most folks, however, want crappie for the purpose of the frying pan. Maintaining a pond fishery that yields large numbers of 10-12" crappie is a challenging task.

I think it is worth mentioning that because black crappie tend to school up, especially early in the year when water temps are still cold, culling is very easy to do. The crappie will be schooled up in and around structure, and you can just catch one after another.

I enjoy catching black crappie in my pond, however, I am one for diversity. I understand how crappie may not be good if one's goals are a trophy fishery of a different species.

Every year, around late March/early April, I will remove every crappie I catch below 10". I end up removing 40-60 early in the year, and I continue to cull all year long in that slot. Over the course of a year, I may cull 80 crappie.

I have seen an obvious increase in the size of crappie I catch now averaging around 12" (I'm sure the several hundred pounds of fatheads & shiners that I put in each year have an effect also).

Sunil I like hearing about the management of your pond with the crappie in it. Will you please tell me more about your pond and the other fish that you have in it? Sunil do you fertilize your pond and if you do at what temperature do you start the process?

Sunil
What's the most productive bait and tackle in the spring?
I apologize if it's been covered. Haven't had much free time
of late. Looking forward to seeing you next summer.
al
I want a crappie pond..........

Al - Todd has all the parts to the puzzle (TShad ,FH ,GShiners, Crappie and HSB). All he has to do is follow the SEP formula from there recent success.

He's the one that planted the seed a year ago. I would like to plug him on this:
He brought me some tagged feed trained LMB in Nov.(mature). The fish also have a brown-orange hue in water. I tried to convenience him to market these at Tx. Longhorn fish. They are unreal! Have caught 2-1 over previously stocked fish. (50 of 370 stocked). Warmer days they are still active at afternoon feedings.

Sounds like Todd needs to join in and tell us the story.

Sunil,

There are 3 ponds around me that I manage with the fishing pole. The owners don't even fish so the crappie are all mine. I pound the heck out of them in the spring and have also developed some good crappie fishing because of it.

I'm curious as to how large your pond is. For the most part, we all seem to know to harvest heavy on crappie. I'm going to begin working on a list on fish harvested per acre.

One of the ponds I fish exhibited some characteristics known to happen on large reservoirs- boom or bust. This is referring to either a very strong year class or nothing. The one pond on my mind missed at least one entire year class. I should keep better records given my chosen profession, but sometimes I would rather drink beer and fill my basket. Anyway I fished this pond last spring and caught a mess of 12-13" crappie (black) and a mess of 9" inch crappie. Two years prior I put the hammer on some 8-9" crappie which I believe were the cohort that eventually made for my 12-13" massacre. I think that my heavy harvest 2 years prior and the missing year class made for my phenomenal outing. This particular pond is 7 acres.

I couldn't stop catching fish. My basket was full and both of my shoestrings from my boots were full. It's probably good that I ran out of fish storage space. I use a 1/32 oz jighead with a red/white tube jig (salty) on 4 lb test. It's practically the only bait I throw for panfish.

There's another pond less than 1 mile from my farm that I fished during Turkey season '03 and '04. The pond is a shy 2 acres and was absolutely full of 6-7" black crappie (both years). The eyes on these crappie were nearly as big as the fish themselves. They had to be older than dirt. We harvested about 80 in '03 and about the same amount in '04, but we noticed no bass. We even targetted bass in a moment of weakness ('04) to confirm our anecdotal notions from '03. Still nothing. So we transported 15 adult bass from another pond and threw them in.

No one fished it in '05. Last year I had to spray some ponds after our annual hunt, but my buddies from out-of-town fished the pond as I worked. They caught some crappie between 9-10". Perhaps our efforts are paying off. The bass certainly got bigger and pulled off a nice spawn. It will be interesting to see what we catch this year.

I have a 3 acre pond established with bass, bluegill, and catfish. 10 years ago we brought in 20 8-10" crappie from a strip mine lake nearby. Those crappie got huge fast! They all boomed to 14-16" over the next few years.
Then out of nowhere a huge population of 8" crappie where everywhere? The next 3 years we would take out 200-300 crappie per year. Then we decided to start the whole pond over. We probably took out 500 crappie that spring, nothing would get bigger than 8"

So we drained the pond that fall with a rented 6" trash pump (that took about 5 days of continuous pumping). We pumped it down to nothing. We thought we were going to find 1000's of 8" crappie.....NOPE, we found a total of 12 crappie that were 10" each. Thousands of small bluegill, absolutely no small crappie?

Here are some pond draining pics, we had a lot of fun with that project!

One thing to remember is that you are balancing predator-prey relationships with any fish you choose to stock. Biologically, balancing crappie populations is unpredictable, as many of you have seen. Some years you may not get any spawn at all, other years you might have, literally, a million babies. It is this unpredictability that leads us to discourage crappie stocking. The other reason we tend to recommend different options is that crappie generally spawn first in a year. After crappie spawn then bass and BLG spawn, this puts an extreme amount of pressure on bass and BLG populations. It is possible to get a BLG spawn very early in a year, especially down south. This may lead to helping manage crappie populations. More study would have to be done on this.

That being said, it is not inconceivable to hear about or work on a small impoundment that has crappie in it. In fact one of the biggest largemouths I have seen in my career come from a small ¾ acre pond that had crappie in it. That LMB was close to 9 pounds.

Basically we are dealing with two top line predators, bass and crappie, as long as populations are balanced properly and steps are taken to manage each population effectively, it is possible to grow large crappie in small ponds. Just like it is possible to grow large LMB in small impoundments. Provided that Habitat, Food Chain, and Harvest are taken care of properly anything is possible.

I challenge anyone to take a large bluegill and a crappie and put them against each other in taste and angling on light tackle. I’ll take a BLG any day. That’s just my opinion though. No science behind that.