DO NOT ADD CRAPPIE TO A SMALL POND. EVER!!!!!

Please don't take all the negative comments as just poo-pooin' your desire for crappie, we're just speaking from experience.

If they get stunted in a few years, they probably will, add 20 or more adult (>10 inch) largemouth. If you can control the water level, you could drain the pond a few feet in the winter to concentrate the fish. Don't drain it more than 50%. Drawdowns help the bass eat up a bunch of the small fish. Don't harvest any bass under about 16".

Good luck.

Added crappie primarily for my kids and grand kids....no one interested in generating trophy fish.

It is not a trophy thing. It is the fact that the crappie will most likely stunt to the size of bluegill after a few years. 95% of all ponds and lakes are not designed to be trophy bass lakes, but rather all around good fisheries. Having a true trophy lake requires much more work, time, money and a little luck; than 95% of the owners are willing to spend of have the patience for. As a general rule crappie should not be added to ponds less than 5 acres regardless of rather you want a trophy lake. I know its too late as you have added them, but wanted to write this for others who might be contemplating adding crappie to a small pond.

Steve is there a difference in what this gentleman is looking for, lots of little crappie and a tank that's full of stunted gills?

Without bass u would guess bluegill would do the same?

Or maybe bluegills diet is more varied than crappie and u could end up with better size distribution with gills vs crappie?

Thanks for your input. I like learning hope to have my own pond one day so it's intersting

Bluegill have a more stable reproduction cycle, and can be controlled pretty easy with the proper predator. Crappie are very erratic in their reproduction and can reproduce at a small size and can eat everything in sight and not convert it very well (causing an imbalance in forage base). If fun fishing in numbers is what you want I wouldnt go with crappie but another panfish. Just my $0.02.

I'm not sure I read his post as that we wanted lots of little (stunted) crappie. I read his post as that he wanted crappie. Both Crappie and Bluegill will stunt without harvest or predator fish. Food (forage) is the single biggest limiting factor to growing fish.

Everything that I've ever read about pond stocking and management advises not to stock crappie because of their over populating,stunting tendencies and competition with bass for forage. And, that opinion has been reinforced here on the forum.
Because of such problems, I've never stocked crappie in ponds. However, I do have crappie in one pond, but not by design, and have no idea how they might have gotten there. I caught 20 or so 3 years ago, but almost never catch one now. These crappie are the black variety with a dark strip running down the back, sometimes referred to as Mohawk crappie. They obviously, have never presented a problem. See below :

I've heard all the same comments from many fishery biologists, beware of crappies in small waters......

Would just like to add my 2 cents worth. I agree with not putting them in. They will stunt. I fish an 1 acre pond, that 20 yrs ago, someone else put 5 crappie in it. It was the dead of summer, only about 6 ft deep at this time. We stocked it with catfish a year later when it got full. ( depth was around 14 ft when full ). We never fished for crappie, just raised some big cats. After an o2 depletion problem 7 yrs later, 80% of the cats died, we then saw the crappie. We removed (3) 84 quart igloos of dead crappie, with 60% of them being the size of your hand. For the next 3 yrs. I put 3 fish traps in it during the "spawn period". ( 3X2 traps made with small screen wire, set in shallow water, and would get 25 to 30 hand size crappie a day in each trap. It would only last for about a week, but it worked. We restocked it 3 years ago with catfish, along with perch. Today the small perch are almost gone, the cats are around 4 to 5 pounds, and when I do catch a crappie, it's usually 13 inches or bigger. I was up there at Christmas and did manage to catch 6 crappie that were about 4 inches long. I guess there starting to spawn up again. I just hope the big cats will keep them under control for awhile.
On another note, at one time the crappie got to around 11 inches on average, you could catch 10 to 12 of them pretty quick. If you put a minner on 1 rod, and a small perch on another, put them 6 inches apart in the water, you would catch a crappie on the perch before the minnow. Go figure.

What did you bait your traps with to catch crappie ? I've use floating funnel traps to catch many bluegill and a few water snakes, but never a crappie or bass. I use floating catfish pellets to entice the bluegill.

I used nothing. I just set them in about 3ft of water with the entrance into the trap towards deeper water (3 1/2ft). I had figured out the year before that they came into the shallow areas to spawn, ( some areas were better than others ) so I just placed them in those areas on a Friday eve. The next morning, to my surprise, there were that many in there. ( luck I guess ). I emptied them, put the traps back in, checked them that eve and only had 6 or 7. I left them in again overnight, checked them before leaving for church that morning, and had just as many as the previous day. Once the "spawn" period stopped, I wouldn't get any in the traps.
The traps were made similar to one of those round minnow traps.

I did use purina catfish chow smashed up and put into a pantyhose a couple of times. It seemed to work sometimes.