esshup,
I look forward to your updates on this pond. It will be interesting to see if you do sample some fish over the course of this year that indicate the degree of reproduction in the pond.
There have been threads on Pond Boss where there was no potential habitat for channel catfish to reproduce, yet there were little CC in the pond. Life always tries to find a way! I wonder to what degree it is possible to suppress LMB, YP, and BG reproduction? I would imagine that BG would be the most irrepressible. I wonder if it makes a difference that they are Hybrid Bluegill?
Finally, there are lots of people on Pond Boss that post to try and create a "trophy" fishery. I wonder if someone could re-create this pond with even more severe restrictions? I was thinking of steep banks with pond liner run down to the bottom. If you inhibited all spawning, then you could ladder stock your trophy species. However, I would imagine you would need a separate grow out pond to annually introduce enough forage. However, that way you could have some control on the size of the forage to maximize growth of your trophy fish. Maybe even need two grow-out ponds?
However, imagine the filamentous algae problem in a pond with zero rooted plans going down the side slopes! Maybe tilapia would be one of the trophy fish.
P.S. I do appreciate your posts about the ponds you have under management or semi-management. Usually, you have made one big change to the pond and then document the effects for a few years. That is great for amateur pond owners to learn from, since that is how most of us are able to manage our ponds.
