Lovin it!!!

[lkintner]

Two of my son's have got me into fishing and we're having a blast. We found out my inlaws have a small pond that no one have fish out of it in several years so about 4 weeks ago we decided to go ck it out. It was my 14 year old son and I he was using night crowlers and i was using road runners he caught a nice crappie (9") as soon as he casted and i wasn't having any luck. After about 30 minutes he was catching blue gill and crappie left and right and i nothing lol. So i switch to night crowlers and bam had 1 the bad thing every one we caught was to small except for the 1st one he caught. This pond is very small but full of small fish is there a feed we can put in to help the fish grow or should we try to thin the fish out? Oh i about forgot i did catch a big crappie the pic is my son holding it 14.5 long 2.5lb we had a great time.

[bfish]

small ponds usually stunt with crappie. I suggest removing (by catching) as many as possible. Small ones will eat just fine.

[lkintner]

Thanks! We will catch and remove what we can. We have learned a lot from this site and hope we learn a lot more.

[feeshrman]

The more you catch the better the quality should get.

[bflowers]

you cant beat fishing together with the family no mater how big the pond is or how big and how many fish you catch.

[lkintner]

bflowers you are so right its the greatest thing to fish with my family. What do you all think minimum size on what we keep?

[wannabe fisherman]

with an over crowded pond I'd keep them all or throw them over my shoulder. As bfish said too many will stunt their growth and you'll never get big ones, at least not very many.

[bowhunter012463]

Depends on how good you can fillet a fish or if you just want to scale and clean the fish. I would also find out what the average size is and that will determine then what size I would keep but leaving the bigger ones for seed. I would also (if there isn't already) put some cover in the pond to give them someplace to hang out. I would also invest in some bait fish to stock the pond with also. Just my 2 cents. Hope this helps out.

[lkintner]

Thanks for all the info! Tomorrow is going to be in the 70's with rain in the afternoon so me and the boys are going to catch as many little ones as we can and move to a larger pond that a cousin of ours have.

[feelay]

Glad you are having fun but I think you need a new set of scales.