[quote=Bill Cody]I don't think you need any deep water structure. The shallow structure that you have now is basically nothing. The pond is only 1/2 ac. Deep water structure is mainly for fish attractors and in your small pond where are the fish going to go that you can't find them???? If you are not catching them in this small pond then something is remiss.

IMO put your money and efforts toward shallow fish habitat structures using various sizes of tubing. Litter the entire area from the black spider down the to the small rock pile depth clear towards the elongated stone pile if you want small fish habitat. It would be even better to extend the habitat clear back to the measly 2 cement drain tile in 3ft of water.

tylerd says " Anyone have any thoughts about putting some BCP in this pond YP, RES, HSB have gotten large enough. Clearly there is fear of the over reproduction of the crappie... but boy do I want to try! I just don't think I want to transition this pond into a LMB pond and I know that could be a possibility if the BCP have a prolific spawn."

There are a lot of fish balance issues for a fishery. Balance will be determined on your goals for the fishery. Just surviving is at the lower end and all species surviving at optimum growth is at the other end of the balance. The more species one adds to a fishery especially if they eat some sort of fish the more complex the balance becomes.

Here are some things to think about before stocking regular fertile crappie into your pond with adult YP, RES, HSB, GSH, FHM. Hybrid crappie have shown to not cause overpopulation problems in LMB ponds. Relatively little IMO is known about their (HBCP) performance of with SMB, HSB, WE, RES and or YP. Yes - RES will consume some tiny fish during their adult life. Your pond can be one more learning example.

1. If the pond behaves normally to my experience do not expect the RES to thrive and annually provide numerous youngsters. This IMO will result in the GSH and YP carrying practically all the forage fish burden. This is why I emphasized adding more numbers of the spider tube brush like structure. Make them abundant with dense tubes. For best protection of breeder forage adults you need a numerous amount weed bed like cover – like 20% or more of the 2’-4ft deep water.

2. Thoughts - Depending on how many foxes(HSB) that you have in the chicken (minnow) coop, the availability small sized forage fish may not be adequate to keep the HSB growing well. What are the fishery goals????. Can you sacrifice growth of adult HSB to have nice crappie? However,,,,, these generally small HSB’s could be a very good thing because smaller sized adult HSB (around 13"-16"max) could only eat around 1.7"-2.7" maybe 3.0" forage fish of YP and maximum length 4"-4.5" shiners. These max size HSB IMO would focus the predation pressure more onto small crappie and others. This plan would involve slot harvesting all HSB above 15”-16” and then replacing them with small stockers – aka ladder stocking as needed.

3. With heavy predation of all small fish, now what are the larger 5"-7" crappie going to eat when 1.5"-2" small fish are scarce??? BCP of any genetic strain do not take to pellets. If they did then one would not have to be concerned about density of small forage fish for growing crappie. IMO crappie larger than 6” are going to want easy to catch small fish 1”-2”. IMO you would be wiser to use a panfish predator that will readily eat pellets and small fish such as pellet raised YP or HBG.
3. Expect the HSB to heavily prey on 2"-4" YP and GSH because of the slender body shapes rather than the HSB eating wide body 3"+ BCP. Strong recruitment of YP due to lots of egg ribbons and adequate shoreline habitat may help keep enough prey size foods present to sustain several HSB n ½ ac.

4. For a general idea of what the HSB will be eating each year plan on each one eating at least 1.5 fish per day from Apr1 to Nov1 and some small fish if available each week during winter. All this equates to around each HSB eating 350-500 fish each year. Even if you feed the HSB pellets I still think they will eat at least 1.5 fish per day. 10 HSB = around 5000 small 1.5”-3” fish per year. Remember all the larger YP and BCP will also “like” to eat small 1”-2” fish so they can continue growing to the 9”-13” sizes. Using mostly all pellet eating stockers will allow more small fish to survive. Hopefully you can add enough cover so some adult FHM can continue producing some easy catch small minnows of FHM&GSH.

5.. Maintaining the right balance and right sizes of all predators including YP & BCP in the pond will be your pond management challenge. Not having the HBCP or BCP will make fish balance easier. I suggest that you remove 3-4 pellet eating perch which equate to every BCP that you add. When you are noticing no breeder FHM and few small shiners compared to years 1&2 reduce the number of fish eating fish.

6. Keep us advised of your pond progress by returning to this thread with updates.



Thanks again Bill, lots of valuable info here....I will focus on the Hybrid Crappie when the time is do, but I do have quite some time to be patient and observe my forage sustainability.

I hear you, and I would gladly sacrifice the growth rate of the HSB to cater to larger panfish such as the YP, RES, and Hybrid Crappie. The only reason I wanted to add them would be to be a larger predator in this equation as I was thinking it would be necessary.


I'll be posting shortly with additional structure placed in the pond. I have about 500' of 1/2" and 500' of 1/4" irrigation tubing to go into buckets to litter that bankside with. I also have some plastic skids and cedar limbs to use as well. I'm hoping to accomplish what has been suggested here and really get some denser cover in the area.