Need to add Crappie?????

My son has a pond that is 3 plus acres and is around 14 years old. When it was built it was stocked with Bass, Bluegill and Channel catfish. About a year after these fish were introduced a local angler put in some Black Crappie. All fish are doing very well and has never been overfished. When I Crappie fish their I can always catch many and they are all 12 to 13 inchers that are very thick and fun to catch. What I don`t understand is that I don`t ever catch any smaller Crappie. I fished their last weekend and caught several females that were full of eggs. I was wondering if maybe they were not reproducing or were maybe reproducing but all were getting ate up by larger fish. I was also wondering if maybe that we ought to introduce some White Crappie?

Thanks

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Originally Posted by Snoball

I was also wondering if maybe that we ought to introduce some White Crappie?

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Why mess with a good thing?? :twocents




(Sorry for the deleted post, above. It was a duplicate!)

Part of my post above is why we can`t seem to catch anything smaller than the ones we catch? Are they there?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Snoball

My son has a pond that is 3 plus acres and is around 14 years old. When it was built it was stocked with Bass, Bluegill and Channel catfish. About a year after these fish were introduced a local angler put in some Black Crappie. All fish are doing very well and has never been overfished. When I Crappie fish their I can always catch many and they are all 12 to 13 inchers that are very thick and fun to catch. What I don`t understand is that I don`t ever catch any smaller Crappie. I fished their last weekend and caught several females that were full of eggs. I was wondering if maybe they were not reproducing or were maybe reproducing but all were getting ate up by larger fish. I was also wondering if maybe that we ought to introduce some White Crappie?

Thanks

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Consider yourself fortunate. Crappie can become too numerous easily in small ponds/lakes. I always recommend harvesting any crappie you catch over 9" in ponds. Some research I was involved with back in the late 80's showed that an 80% harvest of adult crappie is desirable to keep them from stunting. You are fortunate that the crappie are blacks. They tend to be better in ponds than white crappie.

I am in same boat exactly as u are.3acre pond and never catch a small crappie.1 small in 8 years.added 65 8or9 inch crappie last year and 40 yesterday account crappie are getting harder to catch.I think they spawn but fry get eaten.let me know if yu figure it out.

I believe that I am going to put a few more in this year.