I just bought a house and it came with a tiny pond. My sons love fishing, so I'd like to stock it so they can fish when they visit on the weekends. My oldest does not enjoy catching bluegill and is most interested in Bass fishing, but I told him it might not be possible due to its small size.
The pond is around 2800 square feet or .07 acres. Yeah, less than 1/10 of an acre, like I said tiny. The footprint is about the same as my house, see attached pic. At it's deepest point, it is around 5.5-6 feet deep. The only thing we have seen in it are frogs, tadpoles and turtles.
I've asked lots of people in the area and get tons of different responses on what, and how much I can put in there. Decided I needed to get online and ask the experts.
There is one fish hatchery that comes to my local area twice a year to sell fish. This is what they suggested to me:
Spring: 30-50 bluegill, 4-5 channel cats, and 1000 fathead minnows (the smallest amount they sell on their deliveries) Fall: 10-15 largemouth bass
Now, I realize they are in the business of selling fish, and I'd love to believe their numbers, but I just don't.
I'm open to other suggestions.
Here is what they carry: Channel Catfish Blue Catfish Bluegill Sunfish Hybrid Sunfish Redear Sunfish Largemouth Bass Black Crappie Fathead Minnows Grass Carp
And if I travel to a different hatchery I could also get: Hybrid Striped Bass Northern Yellow Perch
I'm not looking necessarily for a source of food in my pond. Mainly just looking for some sport fishing for the boys. Is that even possible?
Welcome to the forum, have you thought about aeration. The reason there is no fish could be fish kills are likely in that size/depth of pond in your area.
By adding aeration you can help with that and increase the fish carrying capacity.
If your willing to deal with kills and re stock every so often you could try without. Not going to be a large investment in terms of stocking cost .
With aeration I would go with HBG 40-50 , YP 15-20, HSB 5 , you could also feed these fish pellets which is fun as well. Boys might enjoy that as much as fishing .
If no aeration you might just want to experiment with smaller qty's to see how they do.
Welcome to the forum, have you thought about aeration.
I hadn't, yet. This is all new to me, so I'm just trying to figure out what I need to do. Aeration for a pond is a new concept, I hadn't heard of before browsing this forum.
Originally Posted By: beastman
With aeration I would go with HBG 40-50 , YP 15-20, HSB 5 , you could also feed these fish pellets which is fun as well.
Interesting mix, and I'm intrigued, because Perch are my favorite.
Forbidden in your pond: any catfish Any LMB Any crappie
HSB would be a great predator for a minnow/RES/YP/HSB pond
Don't forget to add forage variety. You didn't mention golden shiners or the many other types of shiners, various minnows, shrimp, scuds, or the crayfish. They should go in early on. They need a head start.
Think about carrying capacity of your water. I would recommend no more than some BG appropriate for your area and TWO female LMB. You will have to feed your BG and you will have to allow them to establish themselves before you add your TWO female LMB. They will get hook shy, that is a fact. Feeding your BG will be problematic as your water will be gaining nutrients as you feed. But if you want to try, don't do more than that. FHM for some starter food is also doable. If you over do it, you will have problems. Modesty in such a small pond is a must.
Brian
The one thing is the one thing A dry fly catches no fish Try not to be THAT 10%
You can source forage on your own or with the help of this forum. Others in your state can give recommendations. Local bodies of water may have a rich supply of 'baitfish' and crayfish which can be good forage sources.
If you read here you will read lots of warnings about sorting anything from a fish farm or fish truck to be sure you aren't getting unwanted hitchhikers with any fish that you purchase from them. In a small pond a few unwanted bluegill or LMB and you will be soon wishing you had hand sorted before stocking.
LMB and crappie represent a population management problem. They will take over any body of water unless there is a good balance of predator and prey.
Catfish may be OK if you are OK with a very muddy pond at all times and if you can put in very very few and take measures to prevent any reproduction. We call that 'put and take'. A few catfish for pellet feeding and fun catching and eating is OK but there are trade offs.
usually in small ponds you want panfish that don't reproduce or reproduce slowly or else you face the predator/prey balance act. In a small pond with limited capacity to carry fish (fighting over available food, space, oxygen) that balance act gets even more difficult.
One spawn of LMB or one spawn of BG and you are already out of balance.
Centrarchid posted in your other post. He would be a great source to ask how to find and obtain various types of shiners, minnows, smaller shrimp/scuds, and crayfish in your local area.
He also might be able to set you up with some really cool sunfish varieties for color and pizzaz (longears, dollar sunfish, spotted sunfish etc)
Forbidden in your pond: any catfish Any LMB Any crappie
OK.... but why?
Originally Posted By: canyoncreek
You didn't mention golden shiners or the many other types of shiners, various minnows, shrimp, scuds, or the crayfish.
Fatheads were the only minnow the supplier listed.
I think the rule of thumb is that the average pond can support 50 pounds of LMB per acre and 300 pounds of forage. Your pond is less than 1/10 acre. So that's ONE 5# largemouth!
With such a tiny pond I would cut out the middle man (forage fish) and stock something that will make good use of the tadpoles, aquatic insects and terrestrial insects. Growth will not be some thing to brag about but can still provide good fun for kids. Black basses and Warmouth will eat even Bull Frog tadpoles but latter will be inclined to stunt. If they can be found, the black bass I suggest is the Spotted Bass assuming you can find a supplier.
As kids, my brother and I used to create a range of bass fish assemblages in our roughly 1 dozen farm ponds (not legal) where fish were sourced from stream draining farm. Spotted Bass gave the most fish that could bend your pole during harvest and where not as inclined to over populate when alone. Recruitment was not good when other sunfish were present. Later observations working with Spotted Bass indicated to me the parental males do not stay with fry long enough for them to get big enough to beat larger hungry sunfish. Largemouth Bass males do.
Welcome to the forum VEZ. Here is an old thread that has links to many small ponds. I don't know that you will find any answers to your stocking question, but you may find other interesting information about managing small ponds.
I'm guessing they might be the folks you can get HSB and YP from. I took delivery of my fall stocking from them. Their HSB are very impressive and YP looked very lively as well. The folks at Harrison's were a pleasure to work with and exceeded my expectations for sure.
Have you tried fishing the pond? What you see on the surface might not tell you much if you haven't tossed a line in! You could also build a cheap cloverleaf trap, bait it, and place in the pond to sample the potential fish.
My "mini-pond" is mas-o-menos about the same size as yours (the link to the project is in John's small pond thread he linked). I stocked one pound of FHM, half a pound of RR, about 25 CNBG, and 8 or so RES. .. so, not a lot. I didn't build the pond for fishing, so that is quite different than your goal, but there you can check out the pics and video of the aeration system I put in and it's been pretty great at keeping the water quality up.
Good luck with your new project!
Cheers! Clayton
96.85840735 percent clayton... the rest is just pi.