Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose hybrid blugill in new pond

I have a new 3 AC pond in NW IN, I want bluegill, LMB, and catfish. I have read a lot of bad and good things about hybrid BG. Can I combine hybrid BG's, native BG's, and redear sunfish in initial stocking ?
I have already added 30#'s of fatheads.

Well, I did (although if I was doing it over I would not bother). I put 200 each 2" BG, HBG, and RES into a 1 acre pond in May 2003, one year after initial stocking with GS and FH. I also put in 100 6"-9" CC at the same time, and 200 3" LMB one month later. Our hope with the HBG was to provide somewhat quicker fishing opportunities than the BG or RES would provide. On this subject, the HBG have not been very impressive. I believe they grew slightly faster than the BG and RES, and they are perhaps slightly more aggressive - we have not seen very much difference.

Since you have also been reading about "the bad things," I'm sure you are aware of the concerns about HBG offspring (low numbers, "reverting to Green Sunfish"). I think when regular BG are present with HBG, the BG spawning provides sufficient numbers of fingerlings for LMB forage. Several threads here have shown that pure GS can be controlled with LMB and essentially replaced by BG as the BG out reproduce them, so I am not too worried about the HBG "turning into GS" and ruining my pond (I am running LMB-heavy with the goal of good sunfish fishing).

So put the HBG in with the BG and RES if you want, just make sure a good portion of your sunfish are BG. I don't think you will see any big advantages to HBG over BG, but you can make your pond work how you want with them included.

Thanks for sharing your experience, exactly what I was looking for in a response.