Welcome and congrats on getting a new pond. If your goal truly is great high quality LMB then do as suggested above and be leery of fish farm packages to new pond owners. They are designed for general fishing not trophy fisheries. Stock your forage this spring. Forage can be mainly fatheads or a diversity of minnows & golden shiners and fingerling bgill, HBG and or yellow perch. All will grow well over the summer. Mixed panfish will be okay for a big bass pond. Plus mixed panfish are great for kids fishing. Big bass in your area are numerous 3-5 lbers; later a few maybe 6-7lb.

Feed the forage fish to grow more of them and bigger ones. Let them reproduce all spring summer and stock LMB in fall or next spring. Spring is often good to introduce bass IMO because it allows the forage base to grow a little larger fall-winter-early spring before the bass are added. Important - Often the premium pellet fed LMB are only available in fall. For some great angling and big fish also seriously consider adding 2 hybrid striped bass for every 10 LMB. You will love having a few HSB in the pond and you will likely want more once you know them.

If you really want a super LMB pond then insist on stocking pellet trained LMB. They can be 5"-7" as stockers or fingerlings (2"-4") both in the fall. Smaller than 3"-5" in the fall are likely not pellet trained; and pellet trained they should be 5"-7" if not raised over crowded & they were fed pellets all summer. Spend some effort getting quality pellet trained bass. These bass will grow bigger and faster plus you can monitor their numbers and sizes much better since they daily come and eat at the feeding area. Pellet feeding bass have multiple food sources which allows them to grow very fast and stay fat. Pellet fed LMB as 5"-7" stockers in fall and with overabundant forage fish can easily be 12"-15" one year later and 15"-18" after just 2 yrs! Impressive indeed.

Also I would not add 100 bass per acre as fish farms often suggest; again a plan for general fishing. Remember most fish farms will push you to buy fish and more fish. For growing bigger bass you always want an oversupply of forage fish which is the reason for annually removing smaller bass who eat a lot of smaller forage fish and prevent those small fish from growing to slightly larger sizes that then feed the larger bass. You won't have to remove small bass until the original bass have spawned and their successive generations of offspring grow to 5"-8" long.

Big bass don't grow much by eating 2"-3" fish. Initially stock fewer bass such as 65-80/ac. Others will have 2nd & 3rd opinions. Consider and reflect on all advice given. Even ask for more opinions here before finalizing your plan. If you are truly wanting a great LMB pond spend sometime reading the LMB growing posts in our Archives.
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=255372#Post255372

Last edited by Bill Cody; 03/06/15 11:54 AM.

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