I'm in SE Ks Rod. Pond is a couple years old.
For "hot" kids fishing, don't overlook putting in at least a few HBG.
I was supposed to have only BG but a few HBG managed to sneak in. They were by far the easiest to catch and most aggressive towards a baited hook. Good fighters. I think I have caught about all of them now and transferred them to my old pond which already has GSF in it. Thought I needed to get them out of the main pond. But in retrospect, I don't think I needed to. I might have had 20 HBG out of the 1500 BG stocked.
The idea against stocking them in an ordinary BG/LMB pond is that with the larger GSF type mouth they compete with the LMB early on. But I think as long as a guy kept the stocking numbers pretty low for the HBG compared to the overall BG numbers, the HBG would add some early fishing excitement without affecting the overall fishery very much.
I'm no expert, and the experts may disagree with me, but I don't see where a few HBG hurt anything in my fishery and they sure were the most exciting catches of the early fishing. The GSF genes in the hybrids make them good fighters. If one of those ponds is for the kids, some HBG gets my vote. Just my 2 cents.
I would not pump any water from the oxbow pond into your ponds till after the first couple years and whatever you decide to stock is well established. In the Kansas rivers I know anything about you very likely will transfer GSF and BH by pumping water that has originally came from the river. I don't see that as a big problem with an established BG and LMB population. But if you get in a hurry to fill the ponds and introduce unwanted species before there are predators to keep them in check................ well lets just say a lot of PBF members have been down that road and you don't want to take it.
Last edited by snrub; 04/16/15 12:55 AM.
