re: Adding crawfish to supplement a pond

If you are serious about doing this right the first time, I recommend you read this Managing Mississippi Ponds and Small Lakes and follow the stocking and management recommendations. All southern states have a comparable pond manual and they are all going to provide you the same recommendations - all based on research at Auburn University developed decades ago.

First, avoid stocking hybrid bluegill, they don’t breed true in later generations, stick with copper nose bluegill and redear sunfish (shellcrackers), in a 80:20/70:30 ratio. You can stock them now.

Do not stock black perch, white perch (= crappie/sac-a-lait) at all.

Stock largemouth bass next spring, May or so.

If you want some additional variety you can stock 100 channel catfish fingerlings per acre this winter.

Ideally I’d recommend you drain the pond first to kill any fish population that might in it. I’m assuming this likely not possible, and I’ll just assume from your description there is for all practical purposes no existing fish population in the pond.

Though you can add crawfish and it won’t hurt anything, I don’t think it will of any benefit.

If you, or your uncle, don’t follow tried and true small pond stocking and management recommendations developed by southern Land Grant universities that have been around for 70+ years you are likely going to very disappointed in the results 3 years down the road.

The pond doesn’t need to be any deeper than 7 feet. The deeper the pond the greater the risk of catastrophic kills down the road in late summer/early fall from oxygen depletion.

Again, I can’t emphasize this enough, read the manual, follow the recommendations.