My buddy has a small creek (1 acre at the biggest) that runs through his property. Two years ago it filled up, and we decided to throw four or five baby bass in there along with probably twenty some odd perch. Last week he was messing around and figured out that the babies where no longer babies and instead some pretty fat 2 pounders. However he also discovered that almost all those perch where now gone, and the bass where literaly hitting anything he threw in. We're wondering if there's a more sustainable option to feeding these fish, rather than just throwing perch in every week or so? He had thought about buying a bag of crawfish from HEB and releasing them into the creek, as historically they've been present there.

Need to catch 20-30 big bluegill and put in.

Think from bottom up. Need to fertilize to create an algae bloom. Is the water clear? Or cloudy?

That makes an algea bloom. Which all the lil stuff eats....and clouds the water providing cover so the lil stuff can hide and grow to spawn to sustain the forage base.. Then the prey fish eat the lil stuff and on and on.

You know you need to fertilize if catching a lot of smaller fish. Big heads long bodies. Or catching giant bluegill with few small ones cuz the small ones get eaten and the big ones are too hard for the small bass to catch and eat. Need to take out the giant bluegill and the small bass. Small 10-12" bass eat every bit as much as 3-4# bass.

They need an algae bloom to sustain the forage. And cover so the forage fish can live long enough to spawn.

Bluegill and shad are your two main food sources. Find ways to sustain a population of those food sources, manage the bass population, fertilize, aerate the water, and it should turn around. Good luck

Forget fertilizing a creek if it is running water through the property as you described. You would be completely wasting your money. Absolutely do not remove bluegills, that's defeating the purpose.

You need forage. Bluegills can provide it as suggested by Brandon above but doubt that 20 would make much of a dent. Threadfin shad might be a good candidate if you have deep enough sections in the creek for them to survive your winters. Gizzards also might help but not as prolific as threadfins.

Crawfish won't make a dent...it takes 10 pounds of forage to add 1 pound of weight to a bass. You'll go broke counting on crawfish.

A program which includes bass removal and forage addition is the best I can recommend.

For pond management i was always taught that the small bass and large bluegill are taking out a disproportionate amount of forage that you would want to sustain the bigger bass. That the big bluegill were now no longer part of the forage cuz the big bass didnt chase or eat them. That instead the competed directly with the big bass for food. The bass give up trying to catch them. Meadowlark may know better.

Is it a full running creek thru there?

Not a running creek, just a deep part of a creek bed. It fills up with a decent rain, and will hold water year around.

If not a running creek, then the suggestion for fertilizer might help. My advice would be to be very careful with fertilizer, go slow. It can get away from you easily and the cure becomes worse than the problem.

The big gills are about the best source of potential forage production for bass. They are somewhat safe from bass predation and will provide the most offspring. I would remove all the small bass I could but not a single blue gill until things get back in balance.

An easy way to measure your progress, and scientific to boot, is to record relative weights of your fish. You can easily determine the effectiveness of your program this way.

Lot's of good articles on the web on relative weights...this is just one:

https://www.aces.edu/blog/topics/fi...easy-to-measure-index-of-fish-condition/

One other option for forage production and taking pressure off blue gills would be stocking some Tilapia this spring. I didn't mention it in the first response because I thought you were on an open running creek...but if its closed in Tilapia would definitely provide a forage boost and blue gill relief. I've been using them for many years now, probably 20 plus years and have raised and caught double digit bass in my ponds.

Another way to look at the predator/prey relationship. The best cattle raiser is generally a grass farmer.