# What can survive in this pond?



## Bassthumb (Aug 22, 2008)

I have been given carte blanche to add whatever fish I want to my developments pond and I am curious what the experts would say about survivability. It is about 20 acres, turbid water (about a foot of visibility) , 5 feet deep at its deepest and has three fountains spraying water in the air. 75% of the shoreline is developed and the other bit is woodsy with some fallen timber, etc. It has some submerged grass and a small amount of mossy mucky algae stuff. The lake is about 50 years old and has LMB, crappie, bluegill, and channel cats. The bass range from small up to 6 lbs and are not that numerous. The lake is absolutely loaded with small crappie, there are big ones too I have caught them up to 13.5 inches, but there are just tons and tons of 5-6 inchers. I haven't catfished it much at all but the ones I have caught incidentally have been small. So Im not really interested in what would contribute to the health of the pond but that would be a bonus, more of what can I transplant that will survive in it? I want to add some fish just to catch for fun, but don't want to transplant fish that are just going to die off after a season. How would SMB do in this environment? Could they survive without deep water? There would be plenty of small crappies for them to munch on, I would love to add some as I go to St Clair and Erie often to SMB fish and it would be easy to toss some in the livewell then haul them to the pond. How about Walleye? Not trying to have anything spawn and replenish, just want to add and re-catch if they can survive but I wont do it if they are doomed in the environment I described.

Also how would SMB or walleye do in a super deep, large, crystal clear quarry with zero vegetation, a shallower sand flat at one end and rocks everywhere else. It has tons of healthy bass and giant bluegill, carp and cats, it also has a healthy population of crawdads and some structure in the form of submerged cars, a bus and old quarry equipment. Thanks for any info!


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## RiparianRanger (Nov 18, 2015)

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## percidaeben (Jan 15, 2010)

I'd put pike in to work on the crappie population.


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## basslovers (Apr 26, 2016)

Can you remove a lot of your crappie? If it is that shallow you could run a seine net and the cherry pick what you release and what you donate to a food kitchen / fish fry etc. Your body of water definitely sounds like it is crappie overloaded and if it were me step 1 would be remove the crappie. Get them out. All the 5-6" you can remove. Fishing derby for kids, food kitchen, etc.

The smallies will not eat 5" and larger crappie as their mouths are not like LMB. 

You would need to add forage for the smallies such as crayfish, FHM, GSH, etc.

If seining is not a viable option you could add tiger musky which are sterile and unable to reproduce. They won't eat just the crappie but they will certainly eat a lot of them. 

Me I would seine it, select what I want to go back in, and donate the rest. Once you have the crappie managed or removed you could add pike, chain pickerel, tiger musky etc.


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