Pond crappie are growing

[BAMA S]

I stocked my pond last year with a thousand black crappie. They have not been biting and I thought I had lost them. To my surprise I found out different today. I bought my lil fishing partner Patrick his own bnm sharpshooter with a presidential reel today. Also I picked up some curly tails at bps while I was there after reading a thread earlier out of Arkansas about how good they work.
Patrick was so excited to have his own equipment he took my curly tails and headed straight to my pond. He could not wait to hit Martin at four in the AM. I didn't expect a crappie report, I thought maybe a few bass and cats. But this cat comes back telling me he caught eleven crappie 7-9" long in fifteen minutes and they are killing it.
So we learned he loves his new rod and reel combo and the curly tails work in the pond. We will have a report on Martin round lunch tomorrow as far as the curly tails go......

[huntinslabs]

That lil dude is hooked fer sure!

[smoothlures]

Plain ol' curly tails definitely work for pond crappie! Mine really liked brown and that ugly yellow. I used to fish 2 under a slip cork. A minnow trap will catch you a bunch of 1-2" bream for live bait if you don't want to introduce minnows to the pond.

Make sure to manage it well. Crappie in ponds are hard.

[vic n]

Very cool!! You and he should go down there and take at least 100 of those fish out for a big fish fry. In Mo a 9" fish is mature enough to spawn. Assuming you lost some to predation, mortality, etc, each female could drop several thousand eggs and your pond can turn into a bunch of stunted crappie in a hurry. I think I heard that biologists recommend harvesting around 30% each year to keep them under control.

[BAMA S]

Aight fixin to head to Martin to try out the curly tails on those slow feeders. Hoping for some hard hitting action.