no blue gills

[Troy Bahlmann]

i have a 2.5 acre farm pond last year we could see all kinds of blue gills along the edge but this year never seen one or caught one, just crappies. i killed this pond off 4.5 years ago and restocked per DNR recommendations. we have caught the full range of crappies from small to 12 inchers any input would be great. there is large mouth bass, catfish ,bluegill and 100 black crappieswhen i restocked it.

[Walt Foreman]

I second what Josh said, but less politely - it's just asinine that the DNR recommended crappie to you for a pond. It's nearly universal among fisheries biologists and professional pond managers that crappie are the worst thing one can ever do to a pond. It's almost a sure be they're your problem. You probably have a very large number of small, stunted crappie that are eating up all of the food chain. If you stock four to six 12" tiger muskie they'll clean up the smaller crappie within a short time span and restore the balance to the pond, allowing the bluegill to rebound and grow larger along with the bass. Trophy Gamefish hatchery out of Minnesota sells them and would deliver to you.

[Josh Milczski (Omaha)]

Your DNR suggested you stock crappie? The site Bruce mentioned is awesome, so definitely go there and you'll get a great response from very knowledgeable people. If I had to throw a dart at the issue though, I bet the crappie are at least part of the problem, especially if you stocked everything at the same time.

[Bruce Condello]

Troy,

This is a great forum and a great group to ask these kinds of questions, but you might consider trying www.pondboss.com .

Then you would have hundreds of people who are tuned in to that kind of thing looking at your question.


Try "Ask the Boss" on www.pondboss.com