One of my coworkers, who is an avid fisherman, and who has read quite a bit on pond management, has told me that he wouldn’t put crappie in a pond, because they tend to take over. The ponds have a tendency to overpopulate with stunted crappie. He said it is harder to keep them in balance than with bluegills.
I read with interest Rick’s articles on what he does to keep ponds in balance.
The question is, what is different, if anything, about keeping crappie in balance in a pond than keeping bluegills in balance? Anything?
I am in complete agreement with your friend. Crappie need a very large body of water to maintain a healthy population of good sized fish. When well-meaning fishermen move Crappie to their local small pond to offer more opportunities to catch panfish, they stand a very good chance of ruining the fishery. Crappie are very prolific and their preferred diet of small fish coupled with the size and shape of their mouths limit them to eating small bass and bream. Since most small ponds do not have a large shiner population, that means the bass, bream and other crappie are the targeted food source. I would say that 99% of my fishing is catch and release. The one exception to that rule is that whenever I catch crappie in a small pond, I try to find someone who’s keeping fish to give them to. There are several small lakes I fish that are frequented by what I call “bucket sitters”. These are the guys sitting on or next to a 5 gallon bucket with four rods cast out as far as they can sling them. When I fish these lakes, I usually pick one of these guys and ask him if he wants any crappie I catch. If the fishing’s good, I give him the limit of Crappie and then move to the next guy along the bank. In some ways, I’m trying to control the population of Crappie as much as I am fishing. Crappie + small ponds/lakes = diminishing fishery. Just one man’s opinion.
Most fisheries biologists and pond management folks will tell you the pond should be a minimum of 2 acres in size, and preferably 5 acres, before considering stocking crappies in it.
The urban public ponds I fish frequently seem to be in the 2-acre size range. Just my guesstimate, of course. The DNR initially stocks them for the City, with bluegills and catfish the first year, then they add largemouth bass the second year. It appears the City has stocked a few grass carp in most of their ponds for weed control. I don’t believe the DNR stocks crappies in these ponds, and yet almost all of them have some sort of crappie population…anything from just a few stray fish, to effectively overpopulated with crappies. MOST of the time, if there are good numbers of crappies, they don’t get real big. And the bluegills don’t get very big either. These public ponds are further hindered by folks harvesting any bass that reaches decent size, as well as the catfish. This eliminates most of the natural “crappie population controllers” in the ponds.
I can’t control what other people harvest from these ponds (and they DO get a lot of fishing pressure), so I release everything I catch. Whatever Rick is doing on the ponds he fishes…seems to be working very well!
From all of my reading crappie should not be in small ponds. There are arguemnts as to the size pond that crappie could be in. I have read frrom a minnimum of 30 acers or larger.
I do not return crappie to ponds. I also leave all the bass and most catfish in the ponds. Take a few catfish around 1-2 lbs out in a year, but rarely from the same pond.
Not msany of the ponds will get crappie that go over 10 inches long. I do catch some larger crappie than that in ponds that I have been working on for a long time. Having small bass in the 8 to 12 inch rang eto decimnate minnow populations helps a great deal.
Threw 40 bass from 6 inches to about 3lbsd in a pond four years ago. Fish size has increased as the pond owner has banned he removal of bass.
This has been very enlightening for me as I have been throwing back nearly everything I catch including crappie in small ponds. On a side note I’ve read you shouldn’t have northerns in a small pond for much the same reason as you shouldn’t have crappie as they target bass when in a pond with bluegill & bass.
There is a 25 acre or so private lake back home in north MS. Someone put crappie in it years ago but fishing pressure was very controlled, my brother in law and a couple of his friends gained access to it and a jon boat. When they started fishing for crappie in it they were very plentiful and very small, they removed every crappie they caught, one Sunday afternoon we took out well over 100. A couple of years of fishing the lake regularly, along with a few others and removing the crappie resulted in a much larger fish being caught. Due to the public abusing the privilege the access the lake has been restricted for several years, I will bet you the size of the crappie are back to small fish being the rule again.
Since crappie seem to get to large for most pond bass to control, I can’t help but wonder what a few stripers, pike, or muskies would do in a pond to keep their numbers in line. Do any of the readers have experience? Tennessee uses stripers to control populations of shad that get too large to bass to control.
Now Ed living in Nashville, you should know the best way to control the crappie population is with hot grease. I would like some hushpuppies with that please.
Uncle Jesse, the minimum legal size for keeping crappie in TN is 10". I suspect that would be hard to come by in a pond overrrun with stunted fish.
BTW, Rio Vista, a string of catfish joints in the Atlanta/Marietta area, had the best hushpuppies I’ve ever eaten. I spent three of my formative years in Marietta back before it was part of Hotlanta and when the Big Chicken was still fairly new.
I have to resist the impulse to call you Mr. Ed. You have to realize my legal training about things related to game and fish initially came from the state of Mississippi where you can keep any size fish you want as long as it comes from a private ponds. We didn’t really have any public ponds, only lakes, creeks and rivers.
That said I have fished in lakes with slot limits where you could keep a bass from 1" through 14" or from 18" upward but had to return 14" to 18" fish to reproduce. Having as hard timer catching enough fish to eat we had kept a small bass around 8 inches or so. The park ranger came up looked down at the fish and said “Now men about this fish.”
My friend replied “But it’s legal.”
The ranger replied “It’s legal but it’s embarassing.”
My friend and I still speak of embarassing bass from time to time with no other reference know what the other means. That was at Lake Mike Conner outside Collins, MS about 30 years ago. The bream bed in water around 10 ft. deep and were hard for north MS fishermen to catch but fat when you did. The next year another friend broke my line on a crappie I had brought to the side of the boat we estimated at an honest 3 1/2 lbs. the largest I had ever seen. That guy is still a friend.
I believe Rio Vista has gone out of business, metro Atlanta is a desert of real catfish restaurants, which is quite distressing considering all the years I lived in Tupelo and there was a good restaurant on every road out of town. I am the catalyst to starting a Outdoors Sports Ministry at our church, maybe in the near future we should have a fish fry and a hushpuppie contest.
Not to change the subject…but to reach people in this thread that are knowledgeable about ponds. I have contemplated digging one into my back yard of 2 acres. But the mosquitos out here have the west nile virus. How, or could…one control the mosquito problem and still have a neato little panfish pond?
If this is what is referred to as hi-jacking I apologize. I just wanna know the answer or information.
I attended a seminar on pond management some years back. The biologist commented upon crappie in ponds. The basic issue seems to be that crappie spawn earlier than the other panfishes, early enough that the crappie fry are big enough to prey upon the bass, blue gill fry which, over the course of time results in an out of balance population.
One solution was to stock some hybrid stripers. Seems that there is a pelagic stage during the life cycle of crappie that allows them to be easy pickings for the hybrids.
Jim, Having lived my life to date in the SE I am very aware of mosquitos and West Nile Virus. I have spend a fair amount of time around ponds which usually have a few more mosquitos than the surround landscape but have never encountered a heavy enough population to interrupt me fishing. People who are particularly affected by mosquitos tend to use more repellants and go on. I think the small fish eat the larva from the mosquitos and help keep them in check. Encourage the local birds that consume lot of mosquitos to live close to you and your pond. Purple martins are a favorite in the SE for that reason. Blue birds also eat lot of mosquitos as do bats and dragon flies.
I do have bluebirds and bats in the area. Gov has a deal where they will come out for free and check your soil for the suitability of a pond. Thus my thoughts on having my own casting pond.
They are always preaching around here to eliminate standing water to not provide habitat for mosquitos.
I apologize for hi-jacking the thread. Guess nuttin’ I can do a say about that now. I know the thread is about crappie and pond mtc.
Don’t put any crappie in the pond, now we are back on track. BTW, I have never noticed many mosquitoes when fishing on the reservation or at Big Lake, those are just larger versions of ponds.
Right, don’t put crappie in your pond because they might try to eat all of the Mosquitofish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambusia_holbrooki) that you could get to help control the larvae. Of course if you are able to drop the water level a foot or so quickly (like overnight), then you could do like the TVA and gain some control that way. Of course, the TVA dams streams so they are more assured of refill than your pond.
I’ve typically found that most ponds have a fairly small mosquito population due to natural controls. Typically, it’s the little stagnant pools either natural or man made that harbor the major mosquito population. But, that said if you do have a mosquito problem this stuff really works: http://www.northlineexpress.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=5SU-111 It’s based on some type of natural control that infects mosquito larvae and mosquito larvae alone. It prevents them from maturing into flying adults.
