Pickerel do compete for food with LMB, and would most likely affect their growth rate. Not sure how they'd affect the crappie population, pickerel have relatively smaller mouths. Growing up in Upstate New York, we always thought of Pickerel as trash fish, and were told to toss 'em on the bank if you caught one. If your goal is to create bigger bass, I wouldn't add pickerel. If you love pickerel, and want to add some diversity to your pond, then I'd say go for it.
I have to add my opinion on this... To do it right, you must start at the bottom of the cycle. Small pickerel work on small fish. The hope would be to work on the abundance of said crappie. The Pickerel also stay smaller-longer, also an advantage when trying to remove a smaller target forage, which- in theory- should work, but we all know the outcome of theory.
I think stocking these to control larger numbers of smaller fish-smaller than angling can effectively target- makes good sense. Angling can target the larger size which there are fewer of.
If an approach such as this is used then the pickerel need to be removed at a pre-determined size and replaced with small stock again.
The only issue I can see off the top is yearling crappie are pelagic in nature, Pickerel are littoral which may be an issue.
Unfortunately, the best fish for crappie control/management is so far, not available to the public...Saugeye, as they are also pelagic critters from day one and tend to follow suit with crappie through-out their cycle. Somebody should get set up to raise those...
We have a 12 acre impoundment that we tried to eradicate BCP with angling-that we documented, placed a 21" min on LMB and incentivized intensive BCP harvest showed that angling does little if anything to a BCP population that is out of control.
LMB recruitment was inhibited in this case as well, it was beyond fixing without major expenses that were deemed not feasible.
