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That may help the minnows. But depending on the size of the mesh in the net it might also gill net them, so you have to take that into consideration.

If you stock 4" LMB then you don't have to worry about protecting them.

Welcome to the fish hauling world!

I cannot advise you on how much fish to haul using a bubbler as I use pure O2 to haul fish. AND I monitor the O2 levels in the tanks with an O2 meter. (YSI ODO Pro) I check O2 levels 15 minutes after loading the fish, 1/2 hr after loading the fish, then if it seems to be stable, every hour after that and adjust the flow rate on every tank individually using flow control meters. Air has 21% O2, so a person can't haul near as many fish per gallon of water as a person that uses 100% O2. Plus you have Nitrogen from the air going into the water too.............

Using pure O2 I run roughly 1/2 pound of fish per gallon of water. How big were the CNBG? I can calculate their weight if I knew that.

Also, a pound of 2" fish will use more O2 than a single fish that weighs a pound.

Who did you go to to get the minnows?

I don't have many LMB but a lot of CNBG. I stocked 40lbs of FHM last year and I'm sure they were all gone before they had a chance to spawn. There may have been a lot of them that went over the spillway because they seemed to be thriving and then within a week or two I could not see any schools.
I was thinking about putting a 4' by 50' minnow seine from the end of a point to the bank this would give me about 250sq surface feet of area. I would add structure in that area for spawning. What do you guys think if that? I think I would need to feed also what would you use and do you think it is necessary to feed? My pond is 3 acres and I'm adding 150 LMB fingerlings. I was thinking about putting another minnow seine from the other side of the point to the adjacent shore to protect the LMB. I would feed these until about 6" and then remove the seine. What are your thoughts on this?
Thanks for any replies.

I had a huge failure yesterday. I bought 40lbs of golden shiners and 30lbs of fathead minnows and my aeration quit and lost them all. I will be reworking that to have a light on the tank to show when there is a power failure. What would you think would be the max lbs of FHM minnows in a 55 gal plastic drum with a bubbler aerator thru an air stone. On this trip I had 40lbs of the shiners in one tank and 30lbs of FHM in the other. I used this same set up to transport 4000 CNBG 1/2 in each tank last year with no problem. The CNBG may be a much hardier fish than the FHM.

Pay attention to what Bill said. We did a two year test at a customers place that had 4 ponds, all in the woods, all about the same size and same depth. We aerated one with a grid based aeration system, aerated one with a grid based aeration system and threw in bacteria, just threw in bacteria with no aeration and left one alone with no aeration and no bacteria.

We found that compared to the pond that we left alone:

The pond with grid based aeration had 4" less muck build up.

The pond with grid based aeration and bacteria had 6" less muck build up.

The pond with bacteria and no aeration had 2" less muck build up.

The pond that we left alone had roughly 8"-10" muck build up over the 2 year test.

If you don't want to or can't put up a fence, leave tall grass or tall dense marginal plants grow up around the pond to trap the leaves before they get into the pond. Then rake the leaves away or burn the whole pond bank in late winter before things start growing.

This.

I do it on the south side of my hatchery pond to keep the oak leaves out.

Pay in time and work to keep them out or pay to get them sucked out. Pay the price for putting a pond in the woods that is a problematic decision. Tree leaves in a pond is bad for the water quality especially a swimming pond. Contact this place in Dearborn MI. A swim pond in a woods with lots of leaf input would probably need to be leaves removed every 3 to 5 years. I have known ponds in a woods that gets about 1 foot of leaves each year.
https://sedimentremovalsystem.com/

Centex, I see you, at one point above, called your pond a tank. I knew without looking that you were from Texas. Hang in there.

Stop them from getting into the pond in the first place. Put 24" tall snow fence all the way around the pond to stop them from blowing in. Other than that, there is no "easy" way to get them out - just like there is no easy way to get them off of your lawn. (unless your tractor has a tow behind leaf blower).

Keep feeding when you are for the same length time until you can be there at that time to observe the feeding response. I can feed in my pond at noon and you'd think there wasn't a fish in it. 1/2 hour before sunset is a completely different story. If you saw the fish responding to the feed, you might not want to swim in the pond. LOL

Steve:

Send me a PM with the pond address. I can map it from a satellite to verify the size. Go Daddy decided that they wouldn't support the web store format and couldn't transfer any of the data to their new system so I am looking into a new store format.

From where the compressor will be placed the first diffuser needs to be in the deepest part of the pond. That will give you an idea of the length of self sink tubing you will need. If the compressor will be at the edge of the pond, it needs to be inside a cabinet that has a fan to suck out the hot air - similar to a large desktop computer fan.

If the compressor will be in a building away from the pond, then you will need to trench in 1" black poly pipe to the edge of the pond and switch to self sinking tubing. If you need more than one diffuser, you will need a manifold box at the side of the pond or a manifold inside the cabinet that the compressor is in at the side of the pond.

Thanks for the info. My 1/2 acre pond is only 8' deep at full pool, that's why I'm looking at a smaller pump. I have lots of weed and algae problems with this pond. It's about 40 years old. Esshup, I checked out your website, but I couldn't find specific info, pricing etc. Would you guys recommend one or two diffussers for this type of pond? Thanks again.

I wanted to give everyone an update on what happened with this little project. Sorry it's been a while, just been really busy. So, in early March we went to the fish farm and purchased 45 catfish in the 4-6" range and a lb of fathead minnows. Surprisingly they were extremely busy with lots of people re-stocking ponds that had gone dry through the drought, so that was the only size they had. I backed way off the number I was shooting for because I now have delays on my main pond build, so this is going to have to be our fishing hole for a while and I didn't want to ruin it by over stocking. Anyways as we are putting the fat head minnows in the water explodes about 3' from us. Definitely a fish strike. Now I have tried fishing this tank multiple times and have never even gotten a bite, as well as 3 other people. Plus the previous owner said that he thought the tank went dry. We returned the next week with fishing poles and ended up catching 3 good size bass, around 10 small bluegills and another baby bass around 5". We culled out the big bass and ate them, I tossed the small one back since there's really no chance of him ever being able to eat our catfish and we tossed back all the bluegill minus maybe 2 that swallowed the hook entirely and were going to die. We've been back multiple times to fish since and we do know that there is at least one more big bass in the pond capable of eating our catfish fingerlings and are actively trying to catch him. The last time we were out there I thought I saw a much larger fish that looked like a carp that was a solid 18-20" long. Over all, I guess I was way off when estimating the depth of the pond if all of these fish have managed to survive through the droughts. We did set up our fish feeder the day we stocked the fish and have been feeding aqua max twice a day for 1 second.

So first question which I know may be a crap shoot, but any suggestions on how to manage this pond at this point? Of the 45 catfish we bought, one was pretty dead on arrival, and another was in bad shape. The rest were fine. No telling how many are alive right now. I'm not sure if the bluegill or catfish are an easier target for the bass. When we fish for the bluegills, we usually kill one each outing on accident (these don't go to waste, we keep them for bait). Also, the pond at full capacity clearly has room for more bluegills. We are only catching them in around 4-5 spots, and there's a solid 15-16 spots with structure around the pond where there should be blue gill. I should also note that we haven't seen a catfish since releasing them, although I wasn't expecting too until they got much larger. End goal now would just be to be able to catch eating size bluegill.

Second question is that we have had the feeder running for over a month now and nothing really seems to be coming up to the surface to hit the food. I have not been around when the feeder actually goes off in the morning or the evening, I have just tossed a handful out when I'm there usually in the middle of the day. I do see a few small blue gills start pecking at the food when it sinks. Should I only be feeding once a day until the fish start to hit the feed? I'm frankly a little shocked that they aren't more trained to the feed at this point.

Without manually digging or sucking them out?

Tía

Don’t really want to grow fish

Just want it back the way it was 3 years ago if that makes
Sense

Over the weekend I added two Dunstan Chestnut trees and replaced two that I killed by over-watering.

I've got six more to plant. Two are going in the house yard. I haven't decided where to put the last four.

Half a dozen of the trees in the grove have grown a foot or more out of the grow tube. It's time to pull those
tubes and replace them with wire cages.

IMO pond depth and pond volume are important when buying a compressor for aeration. Note good info from 'esshup'. 1/4hp to 1/3hp is plenty for a 1/2 ac pond. You want that pump to produce 3.5cfm to better a 5cfm open flow of air that can operate upto 3-5 diffusers. Ease of rebuild is important for DIY. Age of the pond, pond water volume, type or density of the plankton bloom, water clarity, and number of diffusers each receiving about 1cfm all have an influence for how long you run the compressor each day in a pond less than 1 acre. Many or all suppliers will say run it 24/7 just to be on the safe side of possible error. But if one knows their pond conditions well or are WELL advised in the science of pond ecology then some form of daily on/off can provide adequate pond mixing for the pond's conditions. Volume of water mixed per day and pond volume are important for determining run time.

3" BG under a cork is the quickest way to catch the HSB in my pond.

For NY, I'd look into Golden Shiners. There are no shad species that will survive the winter that won't cause problems down the road.

Here in N. Indiana Gizzard shad can grow from spawning to being too large for LMB to eat in less than a year. The local lake has Gizzard Shad in it. The last gill net survey the DNR did showed that they made up 60% of the fish biomass in the 365 acre lake.

I'd be expecting the current hatch to be available in late June or July. I just picked up 3"-4" LMB from there on Monday.

Try calling one of the aeration companies. It's not only about the pump size, it's about how many CFM air it can furnish at the depth that you will need to place your diffusers.

For instance a 25' deep pond will need a rocking piston type compressor whereas a <15' deep pond could use a rotary vane compressor.

Look at the warranty and ease of rebuilding too, AND if parts are available to rebuild the compressor. We are distributors for Vertex and Stoney Creek aeration supplies. Compressors we sell are from 1/20th hp to 1 hp.

The feed conversion math has also been interesting because most data I am finding is for pellet feeding, whereas the conversion efficiency and hunting effort in non-supplemented systems make that calculation much more of a guess... there are a lot of caveats to the 10% rule. My understanding is that CC will have the best conversion ratio when fed, however, my thoughts were that a faster fish like the HSB might have a better ratio when feeding itself? Analysis paralysis haha

I agree that pellets are the easier and possibly cheaper option, however, part of the fun was going to be creating a functioning ecosystem and biodiversity where there was none before. On that note, how frequent or infrequent can supplemental feed be? Once a week?
I didn't realize that the shad could outpace the hybrid stripers. Is there another species that's better suited? Or a different introduction strategy so the HSB are ahead (like fatheads year one, shad year two)?

When is the earliest you can buy current year LMB in Arkansas? If 2" fingerlings available May 5 when were the hatched? Don't want to but last years hatch but from what I have read they would be a lot longer than that if a year old.

Send that excess wet stuff my way.