Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose advice on forage fish

Jimmydee, the good news is you started with very reasonable stocking numbers for bluegill and redear. What concerns me, if you care about bluegill size which it sounds like you do, is 1) that you didn't stock bass until a year after the bluegill, and 2) you only added ten bass.

The prevailing wisdom in Northern states, which MO comes closer to being than Southern since you get snow every year and probably see your ponds freeze over, is that bass should be stocked up to a year BEFORE the bluegill, to give the bass time to get large enough to prey on bluegill by the time the bluegill are added. It's been documented that overpopulation by bluegill is a bigger problem up North than in the South (and it's a huge problem even here), and while you're not quite in MN, you're still closer to being Northern than Southern, by a good bit. And, since you stocked 3-5" bluegill rather than fingerlings, it's about a 100% bet that your bluegill spawned this year, probably two or three times over the course of the summer. Ten bass have no chance whatsoever at controlling the bluegill that are already in your pond, and when next spring gets here you could really be in bad shape.

I will qualify this by saying that, if you only care about bass, those ten bass are loving life right now, and will get very large. But there's a very decent chance that unless you stocked them very early this year and they got in a successful spawn, that by next spring when they try to spawn there will be such a multitude of bluegill raiding their nests for the eggs and then any fry that manage to hatch, that no bass from that spawn will survive, and that the scenario will repeat the following spring and the one after that and the one after that (but worsening as the bluegill get more and more out of hand), until those ten bass die and your pond has no bass. If I had a dollar for every time I've seen a pond completely stuffed with tiny, horribly stunted bluegill and not a LMB left in it, I'd have a bunch of dollars. I'm working right now with just such a pond.

So now that I've forecast gloom and doom, I'll qualify it by saying, I haven't seen your pond. I could fish it for an hour and tell you whether it's balanced or overpopulated, and if so, how badly it's overpopulated; not being there, I would suggest either just to fish it yourself, if you're a pretty good angler, or barring that, either go all-out and hire a reputable pond manager like Shawn to electrofish it, or if you're on a budget just invite someone you know who has a reputation for being an exceptional angler to fish it for an hour or two. They might do it for free, or barring that, maybe a beer or two, $50, whatever. You can tell pretty well whether the bluegill are overpopulated just from four or five bluegill. If the first four bluegill caught average 4" or less and are skinny, they're probably overpopulated; if they have heads that seem too large for their bodies and average 3" or less, they're definitely overpopulated; if they average 6" or better (for your pond, one year old) and are fat with heads that don't seem large for their bodies, or if there is a wide range of sizes with some large ones and some small ones that still seem pretty healthy, the pond is in good shape right now. Don't quote me on these sizes as this is just me trying to explain to you via typing what is much easier to determine in person actually looking at the fish.

If you want big bluegill, you most definitely should add more bass, yesterday. I would add 40 or 50 8-10" right away. If you want both big bluegill and big bass you still should add at least 25. The key if you want big fish of both species will be very careful, documented harvesting on a yearly schedule of both species such that your total biomass stays well below the maximum capacity of the pond.