What should I kill?
 

Rodney,
I am not countering your facts at all, so don't get that idea. Just an
observation I made one day on the lake. There was a bass near a bed
with its eggs and the bed was surrounded by bluegills, and every time
the bass went to chase off a gill 3 others would dart in and grab the
eggs, pretty much eliminating that entire bed. I wanted to jump in and
maul those gills, but hey, it is nature.

Chris
Rodney Long wrote:
WARREN WOLK wrote:

Why are the crappie a problem???

Crappie over populate a small pond quickly, they feed on the same things
that small bass feed on, and they feed on bass fry. Left unchecked you
will have thousands of little stunted , 4 to 6 inch crappie in a pond,
and just a couple of huge bass. and no small ones coming up. A small
body of water can only support so many pounds of fish, regardless of the
species, unless they are artificially fed, then you have O2 limits that
will only support so many lbs of fish. It all depends on what you want
your lake to produce. You want 80% of the Bio-mass, to be small stunted
crappie, then let the crappie go. It takes years for this imbalance to
occur, but it will happen, especially when you just have one fishermen
harvesting any fish.

You can check this out out at any pond management company, (and some
DNR's) that stock small ponds. They will also tell you how much "total
fish weight" a body of water can support in your area. Perfectly
balanced "ponds" require quite a bit of fish harvesting of all species.
Natural balancing (no fish removed) becomes un balanced after a number
of years, as there is really no way to control the spawn, so you will
have unbalanced results, one way or another, or even back and forth, but
eventually it will get totally screwed up for fishing, and hoping to
catch "any" good sized fish.

What should I kill?
 

I don't know nothing about this but I can tell ya, I have a decent size lake
up here and it's loaded with crappie, where the other lakes here have very
few crappie. The lake with the crappies in it produce numerous fish ranging
from 1-6 pounds, there aren't many people who fish these lakes and yet I
still have a problem thinking crappie will ruin it. I'd be more worried
about toothy critters than crappies.

None of these lakes have been stocked in over ten years and they all seem
to produce good size bass, pickerel, crappie and catfish.

If one were inclined and had the means, I would suggest maybe shocking that
pond to see exactly what you are dealing with, but again I really don't know
much about it



"Chris Rennert" wrote in message
.. .
Rodney,
I am not countering your facts at all, so don't get that idea. Just an
observation I made one day on the lake. There was a bass near a bed with
its eggs and the bed was surrounded by bluegills, and every time the bass
went to chase off a gill 3 others would dart in and grab the eggs, pretty
much eliminating that entire bed. I wanted to jump in and maul those
gills, but hey, it is nature.

Chris
Rodney Long wrote:
WARREN WOLK wrote:

Why are the crappie a problem???

Crappie over populate a small pond quickly, they feed on the same things
that small bass feed on, and they feed on bass fry. Left unchecked you
will have thousands of little stunted , 4 to 6 inch crappie in a pond,
and just a couple of huge bass. and no small ones coming up. A small body
of water can only support so many pounds of fish, regardless of the
species, unless they are artificially fed, then you have O2 limits that
will only support so many lbs of fish. It all depends on what you want
your lake to produce. You want 80% of the Bio-mass, to be small stunted
crappie, then let the crappie go. It takes years for this imbalance to
occur, but it will happen, especially when you just have one fishermen
harvesting any fish.

You can check this out out at any pond management company, (and some
DNR's) that stock small ponds. They will also tell you how much "total
fish weight" a body of water can support in your area. Perfectly balanced
"ponds" require quite a bit of fish harvesting of all species. Natural
balancing (no fish removed) becomes un balanced after a number of years,
as there is really no way to control the spawn, so you will have
unbalanced results, one way or another, or even back and forth, but
eventually it will get totally screwed up for fishing, and hoping to
catch "any" good sized fish.

What should I kill?
 

Alwaysfishking wrote:

I don't know nothing about this but I can tell ya, I have a decent size lake
up here and it's loaded with crappie, where the other lakes here have very
few crappie. The lake with the crappies in it produce numerous fish ranging
from 1-6 pounds, there aren't many people who fish these lakes and yet I
still have a problem thinking crappie will ruin it. I'd be more worried
about toothy critters than crappies.


Truthfully I only know what happens down south, perhaps crappie don't
reproduce up north like they do here, best thing to do is consult your
local pond management company or DNR. "I know" what they recommend here,
and that is no crappie in small ponds, if you want to raise many bass .

I have heard of a few guys that only wanted crappie in their ponds, they
set them up (balanced them) for crappie fishing, and remove huge numbers
of them each year. Crappie are mainly a catch and eat species, these
guys wanted crappie just for food in there ponds.

We also have some ponds set up for huge blue gills, but most want bass
and/or cat fish in their ponds. The bream are there for feeding the
other two.

Some bass only ponds are stocked with just bass, and shad, these raise
monster bass, with many small ponds producing many 10+ bass each year.
These ponds must have aeration devices, to keep the O2 levels to support
the large numbers of shad that are in them, if not, you will have major
shad kills every couple of years.

I have three small ponds close to my house that I work with, we use
Southern Pond Management (a stocking company) to do census, and any
stocking, or any maintenance to the habitat, such as fertilizer, or
controlling the lake's PH.

--
Rodney Long,
Inventor of the Mojo SpecTastic "WIGGLE" rig, SpecTastic Thread,
Boomerang Fishing Pro. ,Stand Out Hooks ,Stand Out Lures,
Mojo's Rock Hopper & Rig Saver weights, and the EZKnot
http://www.ezknot.com

What should I kill?
 

On Wed, 13 Sep 2006 09:39:06 -0400, "Alwaysfishking"
wrote:

I don't know nothing about this but I can tell ya, I have a decent size lake
up here and it's loaded with crappie, where the other lakes here have very
few crappie. The lake with the crappies in it produce numerous fish ranging
from 1-6 pounds, there aren't many people who fish these lakes and yet I
still have a problem thinking crappie will ruin it. I'd be more worried
about toothy critters than crappies.

Absolutely. Its dangerous to overgeneralize on this and IMO the
DNR often are dead wrong about scaring people from stocking crappie in
their waters.

There are quite a few bodies of water (large lakes, small lakes,
ponds, rivers) that are loaded with crappie that have one heckuva bass
population that is healthy. For example, big lakes like
Kentucky/Barkley, Okeechobee, Weiss are world famous for both their
bass and crappie populations. From what I've seen, the bass and
crappie populations usually "mirror each other" in that "when the
crappie population is excellent...the bass population is excellent.
When the crappie population is poor...the bass populaiton is often
poor." Yes, there are some lakes that are overpopulated with small
crappie...but those lakes also have other issues too (ie. not enough
food, unsteady water levels during spawn, etc.)

Heh heh...from what I've seen...them bass just get fatter
gobbling up them small crappie! If there are crappie in a lake, I
guarantee you that Ill throw a crankbait that looks like a crappie bc
I've seen time and time again where bass just gobble em' up!

And some of my favorite small fishing holes are loaded with huge
crappie. In fact, it seems like the size of the crappie in a pond is
an indicator of the size of the bass you'll find in a pond (big
crappie = big bass). Unless it's a washout that only hold 4' of water
(during some parts of the year)...show me a small pond with 2 pound
crappie in it and I'll guarantee you that there are 8 pound bass in it
too!

--
Dwayne E. Cooper, Atty at Law
Indianapolis, IN
Email:
Web Page: http://www.cooperlegalservices.com
Personal Fishing Web Page: http://www.hoosierwebsites.com/OnTheWater
Dog Fishing: http://www.hoosierwebsites.com/onthe...fishing040.htm
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