Or is there a difference?
I am going to hatch some black crappies on the fish farm next spring (will plant brood fish in one of the minnow rich small ponds this fall and allow the crappies to spawn next spring). Then I will seine out the broodfish when I first see fry, and later seine the fry out at about an inch and half in length and feed train them in an indoor tank. Actually I will attempt to give them a head start by feeding under a light at night with an artificial feed that is so fine it is called "fry powder." May use some freeze dried krill too. I do this with my bluegill and yellow perch. I have a wind up feeder that has a belt that slowly moves and releases feed.
From what I'm told it will be difficult and many will refuse the artificial feed, but I'm up to the challenge. The ones that will take to the artificial feed will grow faster than in the wild, which is true of my other species. It takes 10 lbs. of live feed to produce one pound of fish while it only takes about 2 1/2 pounds of artificial feed to produce one pound of fish except for trout of which the conversion is much better. (It's due to the water content of the live feed.)
I ask the above question because once I am able to sex the fish, I will only plant one of the two sexes in my trophy pond of male only bluegill and female only perch. Otherwise the pond will be overrun with stunted crappies.
What do you think from your fishing experiences? In the spring when you can tell the sexes apart does it seem the females or the males are the biggest?
As a taxidermist I'm leaning toward females, but I've taken many in where I could not tell the sex even by looking inside as it was the wrong time of year. Mounted a crappie for a customer that was 21 inches several years ago and I don't think it was even fertile anymore and weighed 3.25 pounds.
Here's the 21 inch fish mounted. It was actually a natural hybrid between a white and black. Something I see from time to time and a local biologist told me is not uncommon. I wonder if being a hybrid caused it to grow larger due to "hybrid vigor" or it was just an old fish.
