Thanks for all the replies guys! Very appreciated! I will be bending your ears alot more in the future.
I should have specified. I am pretty far south in Indiana (I can see the Ohio River and Kentucky from my house). I know we are a little too far south for this type of pond but plan on building a little deeper pond (dad says 14 and I keep telling him we should bump it to 16 or 18) and we are going to aerate and then aerate again.
Our goal isn't to have a pond full of 15 inch perch (although I wouldn't complain!). It's to have a fun recreational pond for when our boats are on dry dock in the winter. We won't fish it much spring-fall. One reason being I don't want to stress the fish when it's that warm. We will take very few fish except in the winter and even then we won't harvest WE or HSB unless they are towards the end of life and we will replenish stock. So can I go a little heavier on the predator side knowing that we don't plan on using the pond as our main source of perch for dinner. I like the idea of laying structure and then removing after spawn to help control perch numbers.
I think we will up the minnows considerably for initial stocking. We also plan on as much structure as we can get away with. And I really like the idea of a forage pond Bob-O! We have an amazing White Crappie fishery here on the Ohio River and a place to not buy minnows for that, and to supplement in the pond would be awesome.
We are not in any big hurry. We figured we are going to dig the pond this spring. It probably won't fill until the following spring, we will then stock our forage and give them an entire year, maybe year and a half before added the YP. That puts us to spring of 18. Won't add any predators until spring of 2019.
And Bill Cody, I know you were kidding but I could never give up Erie! Nothing like a monster WE or SMB on the end of your line. We had a day last spring where we had 7 WE over 11 pounds and 3 SMB over 4.5. Can't give that up
Thanks again guys!
