I'm with you Augie. They're probably in Joey's pond whether he wants them there are not.
While the crayfish experience wasn't what QA anticipated I am hard pressed to conclude it was any sort of disaster. More than 200 lbs of crayfish have been removed as potential food, vastly more than he could have ever harvested in fish keeping the fish population balanced in a 1/4 pond. This doesn't take into account the forage they provided. Crayfish just aren't ideal prey for HSB I guess and so populations reached higher levels than they otherwise would have with a predator more suited to preying on crayfish. I recall Lusk posting that crawfish supplemented as forage don't last long in a trophy LMB lake. This may be because they are higher energy density than BG and easier to capture than BG. According to Lusk, LMB while stop feeding in BG when crayfish are abundant. The CC and BG in QA's pond will eventually gain the upper hand on them. Meanwhile, I would bet that QA has had very little accumulation of muck thanks in part to the crayfish. As with everything balance is key and a lot of all of this depends on goals.
I have considered, for example, using crays simply for production of personal food in a yearly cycle in combination with TP in a small pond. Harvesting the crays around June 1st (reserving a sufficient number of females and males for restocking in holding water) at which time a specified number of TP hatchlings go in. By October the TP are ready to harvest and have produced a couple of broods. One would remove the adults (reserving sufficient numbers to produce next years crop of fry) and later in December return the goldilocks number of adult crays to produce a crop of large harvestable crayfish ... they would convert the dying broods of the harvest TP. Things that can go wrong? Too many crays survive the TP ... so I am sure it would be a learning curve.
