Buckshotdad1960

Crappiefishman, LOL I knew you were the kind of guy I could clown around with. Any body who’s got the balls to call him self a crappie fisherman hast to be ok in my book! Any way I’m back on my med’s now but I’ve given up needle point due to an eye injury! LOL darn those jitters! I’m going to find some crappies even if it kills me! I’m convinced more than ever now that you know where they are but true to the crappie code you’re not going to tell me but that’s ok. It’s ok! I understand, I’m a crappie fisherman too and we don’t share our secret spots with anyone. I’ll find some crappies on my own so don’t worry about me crappie brother - I’ll be fine. Sure I’m old and the weather is bad but who cares? I’ve got miles of shore line to fish before I sleep! I’ll just leave my wheel chair at the end of the road and drag myself down to the water. Sure, I could slip and fall into the water and get stuck in the mud but that’s not your concern! (Violin begins) It might take me hours with my old arthritic hands grabbing at the bushes to free myself but I’ll be fine. That is unless I don’t have another stroke and go into cardiac arrest again. (cough) But I’ll be ok, don’t worry about me Jimmy! Can I call you Jimmy? I just hope I don’t have to lay there for days in the frigid temperatures until somebody finds me. I don’t care though as long as I’ve got extra cigarettes I’ll be fine. (cough, cough) I just worry about the turtles eating on my old crippled legs if I don’t make it all the way out of the freezing water but that’s ok, they don’t work any way! If a man’s going to find a good spot to fish he has to earn it. I’m like you, I just don’t give up my good fishing spots to anyone even if they are half blind in one eye and riddled with cancer. (Wheeezz) Good spots are hard to come by. (cough) Why I wouldn’t even give up my worst spot to a guy who had alls timers and probably couldn’t find the spot again if……………………….was I finished? Me: (Larry) Any way I just wanted to say I understand and no hard feelings. Me: No matter what you’re still my crappie brother. Jimmy: Yeah, you’re my brother Larry! Me: Come here and give me a hug. Jimmy: No, I don’t want to. Me: It’s ok I’m not going to hurt you. Jimmy: No! Me: It’s ok. Me: No matter what you’re still my brother! Come here. Jimmy: Don’t hit me! Me: I won’t hit you, come here! Jimmy: Ok. Me: That’s it! Come here. (Beat, Beat, Beat) Jimmy: AAAHHH AAAAHH HELP!....AAAAAAAHH HELP, LARRY! (BEAT, BEAT, BEAT) Me: WHEN I SAY GIVE ME A SPOT TO FISH YOU GIVE ME A SPOT TO FISH! Me: Boy, sometimes you just have to keep’em in line! Me: I told mom I’d look after him. P.S. I sure hope everyone knows I’m just clowning around! LOL

You might be right on that about the DNR not stocking the pond. I’m only assuming they did. The owners property manager told me he had it stocked but didn’t say who did it. All I know is there are hundreds of tiny green sunfish any where you go along the shore of the pond. Now that I think about it, this being a private housing development, he probably wouldn’t want the public in general coming through and fishing the pond out all the time so perhaps he didn’t go the DNR route? I’ll find out. As far as taking a few fish from public waters to stock the pond, well, I don’t see anything wrong with that. All I need are a few pairs to start the species. I think sometimes we’re a little over conditioned about things and over look the obvious. Stocking the pond could in time relieve a little fishing pressure off public waters for one. With your logic, it’s ok to take 30 crappies from public waters and have a fish fry with my friends every day of the week because it’s legal to do so but its wrong to take 10 or 15 and throw them in the pond to be caught and recaught again. Now, you’ll probably respond by saying, well what if everyone did that? There would be no fish left in the public waters. To which I would say, you know that’s not going to happen. But in a sense it does, think about all the people who eat the fish they catch and still there is plenty for everyone to still enjoy. The police and game wardens like to us your way of thinking when it comes to writing tickets because it their after your money. Not that I’m against laws or don’t want to play by the rules. Laws exist for good reasons but I’m for common sense in all things. For example, when I come up on a stop sign out in the middle of no where and I can clearly see no cars are coming from either way I don’t come to a complete stop. Do you? And I don’t think throwing a few crappies in the pond is going to collapse the system either. What if I brought a few home in the live well then became too tired to clean them and just threw them in the pond instead? Would I still be on Americas most wanted? If ever I find myself fishing without a license and a game warden tries to give me a ticket, I’m going to tell him that he can’t give me one. When he asks why I’m going to say, well what if every game warden who caught me fishing without a license gave me a ticket? I wouldn’t have any money left would I? When fish become more important than the humans they exist for then gentlemen I suggest we have a problem. I spent a few years up in MN. At first it was against the law to catch a carp and release it. This only insured that no matter where you fished it smelled like dead fish. People who obeyed the law just threw their catch up on the bank to die and rot. Plus it didn’t even make a dent in the carp population. So they changed the law and made it a crime not to throw them back. The air cleared and the flies thinned. I know all about carp and there will never be any in this pond as long as I’m around. AND YOU!!! CRAPPIEFISHERMAN! You call your self a crappiefisherman and yet you don’t know any place to catch crappies even though you’ve lived here all your life! Can anyone say LIARER! LOL I should rip the strips from your shoulders, break your crappie rod across my knee and give you a bass rod! The pain from the incompetence must be utterly unbearable to endure and the shame of not knowing where the crappies are must be more than a man can stand! Let the name CRAPPIEFISHERMAN be stricken from any forum, post or blog! Let the name CRAPPIEFISHERMAN be a curse and a dirty word! Let the name CRAPPIEFISHERMAN be…..wait! Hold up! I don’t know where the crappies are either! Ok, forget all that and just get out there and look for some crappies! When you find them let me know! Man it’s hard to find good help these days! LOL I can see that I may be heading down a dead end road here. Has the world gone mad? When men love trout more than they love crappies we must be living in the end times! It must be the end of days! Is there no hope?

I’m not for sure what you mean lilly, contact them about what? My point was that if cold water does exist on the bottom in the deeper water then perhaps the pond will offer the best of both worlds and fish like smallmouth will indeed survive the warmer water that a pond produces due to the heating of the sun in summer. The DNR have already been there at the owners request and stocked the pond with Green sunfish, minnows and crawdads. I just want to find some crappies in the Green and Tanny county area accessible from shore. And if the guys here are right then the MDC will just try and talk me out of putting them in the pond.

Well, I don’t know who you are or what you teach but it sounds as though you have been around the old pond a time or two so I consider your advice valuable. As far as the kid’s fish and keep day, well, that’s up to the owner of course. If it was up to me you would be invited for sure. This pond is not on my land and therefore is not under my watchful care and ever Seeing Eye. I’m sure in the future there will be some people that for one reason or another decide to keep some of the fish they catch. I have promised myself not to cry about this when it happens but I may find myself a bit on the jealous side when it comes to the thief robbing snakes and turtles. Did I mention I hate cranes? They eat my bullfrogs up like popcorn and can out fish a man five to one. I also heard that cranes can transport Reed and Lilly Pad seeds into your pond when they get stuck on their legs from fishing other places like rivers. I like Reeds and Lilly Pads, I think it gives an area personality and provides habitat for fish but if uncontrolled and if the pond is shallow enough along the edges as this one is, then over time the pond will be circled by Reeds and Lilly Pads cutting off all access to it. Word has it that the location of the pond (although dug out deeper and made larger) was at one time where a trout hatchery use to be. It is some what spring feed and is dug deep enough to be below the water table of a nearby spring feed creek. The pond has the capacity to be much deeper than it is on average but only fills and spills into the creek when heavy rains occur. The run off comes out of a mature forest and instead of being left to run straight into the creek, it was turned to fill the pond instead. While in the summer along the shore and on the pond surface the water warms, but in my mind I have always pictured the bottom of the deep water as being colder. Does that sound right to you?

I’ve always felt that a stocker trout becomes wild when it learns to breed. If it never learns to breed then it’s just a stocker trout. Some say that a stocker trout becomes wild when you hook it! Other than that, it stays pretty calm! LOL

Ozarkfishman, Interesting post! This pond, according to the owner who built it, he says its 7 Acers. That’s probably right. It has all depths of water in it with the deepest parts averaging between 8’-10’ all the way down the middle. I’m not much of a fish eater, I just like to catch and release. I do like my crappie fishing but I haven’t run across any water around here yet that’s like MN. for crappie. Stockton I’m guessing would be the closest to that. The owner has plains on down the road to develop the land and sell lots for building homes like Saddlebrook has done, if you’re familiar with that? Someday there will be kids fishing this pond so I am interested in having a healthy echo system that will produce nice fish but a variety of fish. Not only will I enjoy using this pond but I hope others will too. I have put a lot of pumpkinseed, bluegill, red ear, green, goggle eye, small mouth, large mouth as well as some long ear in it. Plus I’ve put in a couple of channel cats in it along with one flathead someone else I know put in. I’d like to add more channel and flatheads next summer. I’m hoping that the big mouth of the crappie will help eat up some of the fry from the other pan fish. I don’t want to stunt the pond so I want to add as many predators as I can but keep away from adding the toothy ones except for maybe a few walleye. Any idea where I can find some war mouth? I’ve never caught any and I’m not sure exactly what they are but I heard their a cross between a bass and a sunfish and fight like the devil!

Well, I won’t swear to it Evolution but I think your wrong on the illegal transportation of the fish thingy! How else are you supposed to stock your pond? Besides, what if I liked my fish kept live and fresh before I cleaned and ate them? As long as I’m within my limit I can’t see why there would be a problem!

Thanks for heads up Black Bullhead but wouldn’t any pan fish over populate and their growth be stunted if allowed to be unchecked without any predators in the pond? Seems to me if enough predators exit to eat up the excess then not only will the predators get big but a few of the pan fish as well, in this case crappie. One thing I loved about MN. is that there are black crappie every where. No matter the size of lake or pond there are crappies. In MN, if it rains over night and there’s a mud puddle in your driveway when you wake up, there will be crappie in it! LOL If you run your bath water then get a phone call, by the time you get back they’ll be crappies in the tub! LOL I don’t know if the DNR stocks them or if people put them in but their every where and nice sized ones too. Lake Stockton is too far and Lake of the Ozarks might as well be on the moon because I’ll never go there either. I need a place closer like a spot on Table rock or Lake Springfield. Maybe someone out there needs their crappie thinned out in one of their ponds. That kind of thing! And I have to be able to get at them from shore. I know they like to be in deeper water this time of year but in the fall don’t they have a false spawn in some places? If I knew where they liked to spawn I could start there and if nothing else I would have a good place to start looking for them in the spring. I would even settle for some kid fishing pond in the city. I would gladly pimp slap Mr. Rogers and steal the fish from the handicapped children of Springfield just to get a few breeding pairs! LOL, I KED, I KED! I joke with you! LOL I wouldn’t take them all, I promise!

Hello everyone, I have a quick question! I live between Branson and Springfield. My neighbor built a nice pond a few years back and had the DNR stock it with minnows and green sunfish. Every summer since, my boy and I have been stocking the pond with fish that we catch from the Finley River. Nothing of any great size unfortunately but at least we’re starting other species in it. I’m sure in time they’ll grow. I’d like to start some Crappies (both white and black) but I don’t know where to find any that are close (so they can be transported in a wash tub without dieing). I’m sure somewhere in Springfield there has to be a stocked pond opened to the public just full of them (I don’t care what size) but I don’t know where. I don’t have a boat and most places to fish on Table Rock Lake, as far as I know are on private property. So I guess my question to you all is – Crappie, oh little Crappie! Where forth art thou, little Crappie this time of year?