I have an approximately .5 acre pond which I first stocked with fathead minnows a few years ago. The minnows population is doing very well. It was originally a shallow cattle dugout, but I have been slowly expanding and deepening it with a track hoe when I get a chance during dry periods. Now depths reach 15 feet in a couple spots, but the majority of the pond is 6-8 feet deep. With this wet spring we have had, the pond has filled and is ready to be stocked with fish. I have always had a fascination with pumpkinseeds, mainly because few lakes around my area have them. For this reason, I want to use pumpkinseeds in place of bluegill. My goal is a a pumpkinseed/bass fishery.

This weekend I visited a friend five hours away, and he took me sunfishing on a lake near him. We caught 5 pumpkinseeds, all between 4 and 7 inches. I brought them home in a cooler with an aerator, and stocked them into my pond tonight. Four of the five we in good shape, but one took a little while to swim away and may not make it

What I am wondering is whether 5 fish is enough to spawn and establish a population of pumpkinseeds. I don't know how many of them are males or females. I fear they may all be males because they were caught up shallow, and there were male bluegill on beds. And if the mix is random, with five fish, statistically there is a 1/16 chance they are all the same sex.

However, assuming I have an adequate mix of sexes, would this be enough fish to rely on starting my population, or will I need to figure out a way to source more pumpkinseeds?

idk re number of PKS necessary, but I do know they are much less prolific than BG. You may want to add a few more. And if you decide to add a top predator, SMB would be a better choice than LMB.

We have a 35 ac small lake with PKS and their numbers are out of control because they tend to hold very shallow (Less than 6")in this particular lake with LMB and SAE (saugeye) present and still can't get the numbers under control. If this lake had much for vegetation shallow it would be worse. It's mainly riprap shore. Actually looking into NP for control. Introduce about 200 5-7" pike and have a 15" limit to let them be taken fairly quickly.
Our experience has not followed the guidelines established which proves the "it all depends" theory.

PKS are known to stunt but less so than BG. I would stock some more and take pics to try and determine sex. I would be concerned with the low # of fish/pairs. If only 1 is female then that would not be good (all eggs come from her). I would suggest 25 at least with 10 being female. You should consider SMB as the predator.

I did the same thing by adding a small number of Pumkinseed to my mostly Bluegill pond.

I'm not sure the Pumkinseed will reproduce when they are so outnumbered by Bluegill though. More than likely they will cross-breed, creating a hybrid of the two. Not a bad set of genes to add to the mix IMO.

Started my LCS population with a dozen 2-3" fish and there were already RES and YP in the pond, but plenty of plants for cover. More is certainly better. Too bad I cannot find a supplier of pumkinseed in Indiana or I would start a population in our newish 1/2 acre pond that has no predators yet (just FHM and LCS). Good luck!

Thanks everyone for the answers. I was already considering SMB and judging by the consensus here, I will most likely go with them. My is to wait until I am sure there has been a PKS spawn before stocking predators. I will try to make another trip sometime and catch a few more pumpkins as well. I will take pictures in the future to try to sex them before stocking. I was planning to this time, but I got home later than I anticipated and the mosquitos were awful, so I didn’t want to waste any more time outside than I had to.

Snipe, how much water is less than 6" deep? Also in winter do they remain that shallow? Sure they aren't but the affinity to very shallow water sounds a lot like orange spotted sunfish.

We noted their locations while electrofishing. Obviously they don't spend eternity there but our efforts to control their numbers has been fruitless.
We do have some orange spotted sf there too, but rarely see many of them. A lot of UE spent there, nothing has made an impact yet.

Hi Derek

Sorry I just stumbled onto your post. Welcome to the forum and congrats on your new pond!

I work a lot with SMB and encourage your plans for them to serve as your apex predator. I suggest stocking your BOW with forage first [GSH, FHM, etc.], your SMB 6-12 mos later and PS 6 mos later. If you stock PS first I don't believe you'll ever be able to get in control of their populations given the head start and you'll likely be managing a stunted population thereafter. The SMB just won't be able to catch up.

Dr. Dave Willis performed research on some SD stunted PS ponds and introduced SMB to help manage the population. They didn't impact the PS population to the degree to eliminate stunting, however the SMB did perform very well based on the dense PS population. While their SMB stocking didn't result in a trophy lepomis fishery, it did yield some great SMB fishing. Bottom line, SMB are poor at managing BG in my experience, and Dave's experience with PS suggests the same.

With all that in mind, consider forage base first, SMB, then PS. I think you'll spend far less time managing your PS population over time with this stocking strategy.