Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Raising Forage and Bait Building and managing a forage pond

Many of the experts here have built ponds dedicated to providing forage for their other ponds. Would anyone be willing to provide some input on what it takes to build and manage a quality forage pond? I would think this info would be very helpful for the PB community.... not to mention I'd like to hear from you guys for my own selfish reasons. hehe....

Good topic. I'm interested too.

I've done several forage ponds. One I have is about 1/8 acre, 6 ft. deep in the middle with sloping banks when full and full doen't often happen in my area of 22 inches of average rainfall. It MUST have a couple of areas that can be seined.

What I do/did: Stock about 3 or 4 pounds of FHM. Add a couple hundred BG or CNBG. I also tossed in 25 4 to 6 inch CC but can't remember why. Wait about a year, maybe not that long. I don't use a feeder but suppose that would help. Start seining. Keep seining every couple of months. You will not be able to slow down their reproduction. If you don't manage it by seining, they will over reproduce, foul the water, have a DO crash and mostly die. I have problems getting anyone on the other end of a seine so I do some trapping with a very large trap.

I use pellets in a nylon paint strainer bag with a handful tossed in the trap for bait. I also toss a handful around the trap. I can check it every hour and get 50 to 60 BG, CNBG and some RES. The RES seem to trap better when I use a fish based pellet rather than a soy based one.

With this small pond, I've sold fish, given away fish and tossed fish on the bank. They are easy to start but hard to maintain.

I also have several really small water holes that are mostly good for raising mosquitos. So, I trap some small BG in the Spring, toss them in and go away. When they start to dry up at the end of Summer, they are lousy with 1 inch BG. No problem raising BG, but working them is a job.

Good topic. I'm interested too.

If you don't have a copy of the following PB mag get one and learn how to avoid the problems DD1 described and still get lots of extra forage - all with out the cost of a new pond.

POND BOSS ARTICLES CONTENTS 2007

JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2007 –

10. A HATCHERY POND INSIDE A POND – BLOCKING NETS. Eric West describes blocking nets, their benefits and how he used them to increase forage and the size of fingerling bass to improve survival after release. How to have a forage pond inside your pond and its ease of operation.

And also get this one to compare what you want.

POND BOSS MAGAZINE CONTENTS 2005

NOV - DEC 05

6. HATCHERY PONDS – Tips how to decide to use small ponds for fish production. Lusk goes over several of the things to consider when using a smaller pond for raising fingerlings/forage.

I certainly don’t qualify as an "expert” but I’ll be happy to share my experience.

My only experience with “forage ponds” was when we built a ~¼ acre pond intended for this purpose.

First stockers were FHM and RES with plan to add BG at a later date, but became concerned with over abundance of the original stockers and problems discussed on the forum – so - the forage pond became a HSB “grow-out” pond with excellent results of forage trained HSB.

When Overton began growing out adult size HSB this “grow-out” pond was no longer needed for this purpose, so it became an experimental RES/CNBG/HSB pond.

If I had only learned about Condello’s “MALE ONLY” CNBG concept early enough, it would have saved me a lot of grief, and I would not have stocked CNBG brood fish.

Now we have an over abundance of CNBG with a prolific spring/rolling spawn.

Presently we have ~ 25+ ~2 # HSB and one 2# female LMB to attempt to control the BG spawn.

This pond is too deep to seine, fish became very throw net shy, and my trapping attempts have been feeble.
After reading Bill Cody’s suggestions about trap placement I realize I’ve been placing traps in too deep water, so next spring I will begin anew placing traps in shallow water parallel to bank – thanks Bill.

This is a fun little pond to fish with 2#+ HSB, 9-10”CNBG and RES to 12 inches.
If trapping and hook and line, in addition to HSB and female LMB predation is not successful, I’m open to suggestions but reluctant to add additional female LMB with out professional ID.

Pardon long-winded post, but long story short, no more forage ponds for me.
I agree with DD1 – too much risk of over population without extensive labor involvement.

If starting over, which may be necessary if experiment fails, I will transfer from main pond, adult male CNBG, RES and HSB, with tilapia for forage, supplemented with a high protein feed program.