Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations I think I messed up...

I have a small 1 acre pond, great large mouth population. One day I counted a school of 20 nice 10-12 inch LMB on my GoPro camera. I have caught some really nice BG in it as well. But I love White Crappie. I caught some nice slabs and put them in my pond. Then i caught some smaller ones, and put them in there. All in all there are probably about 35 White Crappie now swimming in my pond. Did I screw it up?

Well...................

That all depends on your goals for the pond! What are your goals for it?

There is potential for them to take over your pond. I'd take out every one I caught, if only cause they can reproduce like crazy.

Agree, It CAN sometimes be done but takes never ending work to eliminate the young ones.

Well my goal was to be able to get a nice crappie dinner in my back yard; at least that was my thought process. But the more I read the more I think that I'm an idiot, and should have done some more research. Regardless, I thought that with the large number of LMB, and the fact that I have not caught a BG in the pond for over a year and a half that putting the crappie in would work out quite well. IE the LMB would have lots of little crappie to eat, and some would live to go on my dinner plate. Another little fact is: I can't get any of the LMB to bite ANYTHING! And again like I said I think someone has fished out my BG population. Anyways that was my thought process. The Lat/Long to the pond is: 41 20'13.41N 82 20'46.21W. Maybe that will give you a idea of what the pond looks like, and help you guys in lending me some advise. Thanks for your time gents.

Definately messed up.. to be blunt with you.. couple years you'll prolly want to think about rottenone the pond for a fresh start..

We love crappie too, and added 60 Black Crappie to our pond last year before knowing any better. Our pond is also in the back yard, so we are hoping we can keep things managed fishing it several times a week (which we do already).

We can learn (and hopefully without Rottenone) together!

Our goal is for healthy fish, not necessarily giants of any given species, so fingers crossed it will all work out.

OK, go catch some 4 inch bluegills and free line them without a cork or weight. Or maybe just a cork. I'll bet that you'll catch a bass.

The bass will eat a bunch of crappie yearlings but they certainly won't be able to eat them all. And, that becomes a problem.

Heck, fish for the crappie and bass. Have fun. When it is no longer fun, kill everything and start over.

I'm with Dave. With those goals, and very few BG showing up in a LMB laden pond, I think you might be just fine for a sustaining crappie population. The crappie should have already spawned this year, or be very close to being done spawning. Whatever the crappies hatch next year should be hammered by the LMB.

If you can't keep ahead of the crappies, just start over.

In my personal pond, the previous owner stocked crappie. At that time, the pond was 1/4 - 1/3 ac. I fished the heck out of it, keeping every crappie that I caught. I renovated the pond 6 years after I bought the place, increasing the pond to around an acre in size. I only caught 2 crappies since then, the last one 3 years ago. By fishing hard and keeping every one I caught I was able to rid the pond of crappies.

I agree 100% with Dave D.

We bought our present place about 9 years ago. I thought I knew a fair amount about raising fish -- wow, I was wrong. Then, in desperation, I found Pond Boss.

The property had one existing pond that was in horrible shape due to lack of erosion control, way too many nutrients flowing in, and a fish population that was way out of proportion.

At least a dozen channel cats between 30 and 40 inches had taken over the neighborhood like a mafia gang. The pond also had black crappie, redear sunfish, bluegill, and largemouth bass. There were a few huge largemouth bass, which were the 2nd tier bad-gang. There were a gazillion stunted crappie and bluegill.

I eventually got the catfish under control. The next issue was the crappie.

This may have been a little easier for me than others, since my goal was trophy bluegill. After getting the catfish under control, I started taking out all the medium to large (10-11 inch and bigger) largemouth bass, that we could catch. That left a whole bunch of hungry young largemouth bass, and all those stunted crappie and bluegill to dine on by the bigger predators.

It took about three seasons to get things under reasonable control. I had a bad year about three or four years ago after a very bad winter, when we had a winter kill.

The good news is that earlier this week was like a perfect fishing evening. I got about a 20 inch hybrid striped bass (HSB), about a 24 inch channel cat, about a 14 inch crappie, and a whole bunch of bluegill that were mainly 8-10 inches or bigger. All the BG over 10 inches went back in. These were all caught on a flyrod using various small baits. I also got a whole lot of largemouth bass between about 7 and 11 inches. None were kept. The high water that reached into the pond edge grasses was filled with year-of-young, or slightly older fingerlings.

We never ever release a crappie-- no matter what size. By keeping a very large population of small-to-medium size largemouth bass, a few channel cats, and a few hybrid striped bass in this pond, only a few crappie ever make it to adulthood. However, for the last several years, I've probably caught less than six crappie a year from this pond. We manage the bluegill and redear for size and thickness, meaning we don't take any big ones, and we never fish them during spawning season. We also usually add trout during the winter -- just not this year, in this pond.

Perfect, from my perspective.

My other fun pond is just crazy with hybrid bluegill from about 3 inches to 9 inches. It is only three years old, so I don't yet have a good history. It has a few channel cats, and this winter we put in golden trout and rainbow trout to hopefully control any offspring from the hybrid bluegill and catfish -- and the catfish are hopefully also helping control any offspring of the hybrid bluegill. I also put in a few smallmouth bass to assist in the culling. I'm about ready to put in another 100 hybrid bluegill, but I'll keep them in cages for a few months to get them to a size where they will be somewhat safe from predators, like the channel cats and smallmouth.

But, anyway those are just my thoughts.

Ken

I was very concerned when I started this post, but maybe it'll work out. I'm going stop putting them in it. If it does work out 30 should be enough to get started. The pond has little structure besides the dock. Should I throw in some dead trees, I have about ten dead 6 foot tall Pine trees? Maybe tie some weights to them?

Great story about your journey and great inspiration Catmandoo. Thanks. Also esshup's experience right before your post.

It is the hands on stuff like this that helps the rest of us possibly avoid mistakes ahead of time, or help us rectify them if we do run into trouble.

I've sure learned (or at least have been exposed to the learning process) a lot here on Pond Boss from posts like yours.

Thanks for relating.

That might give the fish some cover to relate to, and to concentrate the fish, making them a bit easier to catch. If you put them in, place them so the fish will utilize them when you want to catch fish. (i.e. Placing them in 20' deep water won't help much if you want to fish during the middle of summer and the pond isn't aerated.) Also, make sure that nobody jumping off the dock can jump or dive into the trees.