My experience with the Northern Virile Crawdads…
My old ¼ acre pond, before renovation, was silted so that it was only 2 feet deep and 2 – 3” crawdads had taken over. There were no fish. The pond was completely void of plant life (no FA either) and continually muddy. I thought the pond might have been polluted, but it turns out that crawdads are great at eating plants and stirring the water up. For fun, I caught some “fish” out of the creek and put in the old pond. Turns out they were GSF and multiplied rapidly over the next two summers and started knocking the crawdad population down considerably, FA showed back up along with some emergent plants and the water cleared up quite a bit. Then I renovated the pond back to its original 10 foot depth and started over…

The first year with water I put in FHM and caught probably 100 crawdads from the creek. I call the first year “the year of the minnows” as the pond exploded with minnow production. The evidence of crawdads was minimal at best, so I installed another 200 crawdads the following summer along with the first stocking of 2 to 6” game fish. Then the crawdads exploded, hence “the year of the crawdads”. They managed to grow fast enough to stay ahead of the mouth gape of the HSB and I could catch 50 or so in a ½ hour with a 7’ diameter throw net. The “year of the crawdad” proved to be a murky water year, but I had also added aeration to the pond. Most say the water should settle out after the aeration system ahs been up and running, but not so far…could be the crawdads (time will tell). Th pond also started growing ample amounts of Arrow Head (AKA Duck Potato or Wapato) which flourished at the beginning of the year, but were cut back substantially towards the end of the year as the crawdads growth spurts accelerated and the plants matured.

Some of this seems concerning, but I suspect that the cycle will eventually level out as the HSB get big enough to pound on the largest of crawdads. This will lead to a reduction of crawdad populations, hence a reduction in plant devastation which will lead to better cover for the crawdads. The water should clear up some leading to more plant life hence more cover and food for the craws…hopefully yielding a sustainable population of crawdads. We will see!

Depending on your current pond condition (plant life, cover, fish size classes, etc) you could see some of the cycles that I have witnessed, and my story should give you a good idea of some things to expect given that your installation does not turn into fish food right out of the gate. Regardless, make sure you have plenty of rip rap rock along the bank. I have about 25% of my pond bank (the dam,the gentlest slope) lined with a band of 3 foot wide creek rock from gravel to 12 stones.

Sorry to be long winded, but sometimes I can’t help myself.

Fish on!,
Noel