Crappie and a little slice of heaven....

I've never seen a pond like this reproduce crappie in such an abundance. Why? I don't have a clue....it's a 15-acre tank in AR, 40ft deep, that is behind our retirement home (home in background). Old house but we are fixing it up and will be living there in 3 years. Back to the pond....I've been fishing this tank for almost 30 years. During crappie spawn, you can walk the dam and catch anywhere from 50-100 nice, big black and white slabs by noon. Only people that fish it are family. It's always been that way, but the bass growth are stunted. I guess the lake needs threadfin shad. It has a great population of perch and crappie and a bunch of little bass, that's about it. There are two amura in there that keep it pretty clean. I've never cattfished it, so don't know about that. There are a few big bass in there but not many. We need a fisheries biologist to help manage, probably. Waiting for my son to graduate with biology degree and he says that he can do it. We'll see. We can reap the crappie while we're waiting, I guess. Me and BIL caught these in an hour & a half the other day.

Beautiful land buddy! Nice slabs to!

Beautiful place Okie!

Awesome place with plenty of fish. Love it!

Agreed

those blue gill are massive

yep

wow, that looks like heaven on earth. sounds like you have a healthy population in general which is great. agree you need to stock bait regularly. there are some serious pond/tank management people out there online and sure they can point you in the right direction.

You'll need to remove several hundred crappie is you want the bass to get bigger and more numerous, as well as stock it with shad.

Awesome post. Crappie and Bluegill! It just don't get any better!



Side Note: Yes Sir a slice of Heaven for sure! God is great!

Is the Pearly Gates on the other end,....

I hope so....just not right now. When he's ready, I'll be ready....

The bluegill will be your number one food source in the pond so I would never remove them. Stocking with shad can get expensive and they will die at certain water temps during the winter. Keeping a healthy bluegill population and removing the bass/crappie will be your cheapest management solution. If money isn't an issue, shad would be great. :-)

I think the depth adds to the volume of water and makes the pond able to produce the crappie you are catching. Also, more importantly the good genetics of the crappie allow for the size.

The bass genetics may not be that great. Bass are aggressive feeders and will readily eat small bream. Usually the bass feed well and the crappie do without.

I wouldn't make any drastic changes, it's an ecosystem, you can definately screw it up.

I would be happy with the big crappie & big bream and not worry too much about growing giant bass. Everybody wants to grow giant bass but once you have a couple of pictures, there really isn't much value to them.

True that

Nice looking place!!! And some nice fish!

Grasshoppers , flying insects and other crawling insects can keep the sunfish healthy. I am told they reproduce 4 times per year which can feed a lot of crappie.

Don’t worry about the bass

crappie are prolific reproducers. one of the worst fish you can have in a pond. I would start by culling all crappie I caught, and all bass under 2 pounds. fill the freezer with fillets.

that is really beautiful

i would keep it like it is
&
eat a lot of crappie

Those are some big crappies and bluegills. Great lookin place,

If I had a pond like that I wouldn't change a thing. Bass are overrated in my opinion but crappie and good sunfish push my happy buttons.