Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Black Crappie

I have a trap that works great for catching small crappie. It is what I use to control population. My trap is about 3ft x 3ft x 4ft. It is made using 1 inch PVC as the frame. I bought 3 way PVC fittings from an on line outfit that sells them for making PVC furniture. These are not available in plumbing places. For netting I bought some 1/4 mesh plastic netting. I covered the frame on bottom and sides with the netting by cutting it to fit the sides of the frame and attaching with nylon zip ties. On each of the two 3ft x 4ft sides I cut two round holes about 10 inches diameter for a total of 4 holes. They should be staggered on the sides in such a way that the holes on one side do not line up with those on the other side. Then I made 4 funnels out of the same netting. Each funnel is 10 inches diameter on the large end and about 4 inches on small end. My plastic netting is rigid enough that when you roll it into funnels and tie the ends together with zip ties the funnel supports it's own weight. The funnels are long enough to reach about a third of the way across the trap (in my case about 1 foot long). Attach them over the 10 inch holes on the inside of the trap. I then attached a piece of wire to the small end of each funnel and run it across to the other side of the trap, pull the wire snug and attach to the opposite wall of trap. This keeps each funnel pointing horizontally across toward the opposite wall of trap. The wires should be tight enough to pull the opposite walls in toward each other so that they are concave when looking from the outside of the trap. To make sure the trap floats add some swim noodle material or something like it along the sides of the trap for flotation or just place the trap in shallow water. The trap needs to float a bit above the surface since I have witnessed crappies jumping over the edge to escape. I will typically drop this trap into the water alongside my dock. The idea is that as fish swim along they bump into the side of the trap. As they swim along the wall of the trap looking for a way past the concave wall leads them to where they find the holes and swim into the trap via the funnels. Once inside they aren't smart enough to look for the small end of the funnels and swim into the funnel to escape. They will just bump along the inside of the trap wall and never get out. Works on the same principle as lobster traps and many of the simple minnow traps you can buy. The more area you have on the sides of the trap with entrance holes the more fish will bump into the trap and eventually end up inside. If there are a lot of small fish around I can easily catch 30 to 50 fish in an hour. You can make this trap from any kind of netting you have available as long as you can keep the walls tight enough to be rather rigid and the funnels of course must hold there open funnel shape (cannot collapse). If your netting is very flexible then the funnels can be made using heavy wire rings at each end to help them hold their shape along with the cross wire that stretches them out. You may need two cross wires in this case. I bought my netting from Aquatic Ecosystems and they sell it for trap netting. They also sell the 3 way fittings too but more expensive than furniture fittings. If you need pics I could get some.