Want to stock pond with crappie. Too many mudcat making it muddy. Don't want to have to kill fish.will they survive?

Check with Salex from Private Water fishing. He should know.

How large is the pond? Crappie aren't generally recommended by most experienced folks in water bodies less than about 10 acres.

Sure they'll survive. The right question is, "Will they thrive and grow?" They will not in a turbid pond full of mud cat.

First, crappie are sight feeders and need clear water to feed properly.

Second, crappie cannot feed on mud cat, they need minnows and shad to eat. Most small crappie ponds (less than 10 or 20 acres) require regular stocking with minnows, at least three or four times a year, in large quantities to grow. Takes about ten to twenty pounds of minnows per pound of crappie. At $12/pound for minnows that is about $120 to $240 per one pound crappie produced, kinda pricey if you ask me. In a larger body of water crappie can find and feed on a larger variety of things such as insects, small sunfish in abundance, and especially shad (threadfin).

Do not let some salesman talk you into it. Consult a biologist.

Third, crappie can spawn at a very small size, around 3 to 4 inches and will do so repeatedly, even if in relatively poor condition. This results in a pond full of sexually mature crappie around 4 inches long.

Best bet is to kill the mud cat and restock with sunfish and bass. If a large pond, then you might try a few crappie.

I seldom use them, but the lakes I manage and see them doing fairly well in are in the 250 to 1000 acre size range. These are lakes with a wide variety of both forage and predatory species in them. This helps maintain a "balance" by many crappie being eaten by other predators as well as providing some forage for the crappie to eat.

There are a few "tricks" though. One is to see if you can find some "hybrid" crappie. Cross between white and black crappie. These are sterile and do not reproduce so there are only the ones you've stocked in the pond. Maybe 50 in a one acre pond that is regularly restocked with minnows and has no bass or other predators (like gar, green sunfish, warmouth, etc.) in it. Another trick is to find grown crappie near to spawning and only stock one sex, if you can identify the sex of them with 100% accuracy.

If bass are difficult to manage, crappie are downright impossible. They've all the problems bass do plus many more.

I cannot add much to what Brett said. However, we would need to know a lot more about your situatiion.

My pond is only half an acre

"Only half an acre" is still a fair sized pond. Probly not the best candidate for crappie.

Hybrid sunfish and a sack of fish food might be a better choice.

You can make your pond "act" like a much bigger pond by adding aeration, stocking the right kinds of fish and feeding them regularly with a good quality fish food.

Depending on several other factors, hybrid stripers might be an option. As Steve says, we need to know a little more about your pond. Depth, general shape, water supply, etc.