Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Is this enough???

I have been doing research on creating a smallmouth pond in New Jersey. I don't want to use artificial feed. I'm hoping that I can provide enough forage to do the job for me.

I know all about creating habitat for forage for spawning, hiding, growing, etc. I'm not concerned about getting populations of anything established in my future pond, as all the forage will be going in a full year ahead of the bass.

Does this look like it will be enough to grow some trophy smallies?

Bluntnose Minnows
Banded Killifish
Golden Shiners
Lake Chubsuckers
Grass Shrimp
Crayfish

I really didn't want to add a secondary predator species, but I will if I have to.

Possible candidates are redear sunfish or yellow perch.

I like the redears because with them in the mix I can add a few more species to the pond, like fingernail clams and wandering snails. I guess that the clams would be an effort to keep the water a little clearer and provide a self replicating source of protein for the crayfish which would in turn supply my bass with larger food items.

I would think that the shape of the yellow perch would be much more advantageous for smallmouth forage, but for some reason I am reluctant to add them. I guess that I'm worried that at a larger size they will compete heavily with the bass for food.

I know that adding redear or yellow perch will increase angling opportunities, but I don't really care about that. A pond full of chunky smallmouths and no other game fish doesn't sound like such a bad angling opportunity to me.

I am also looking into gambusia and seeing how to make my pond as hospitable as possible for different insect species.

I'd like to get this right the first time, do it with bass as the ONLY predator, and then only have to worry about how many of what size bass I am going to harvest every year to make managing a body of water like this as easy as possible.

Where do you plan on sourcing the non conventional forage species from?

Depending on where you are in NJ, RES may not survive the winters?

How big of a pond are you planning on building? IMO, a pond should be at least 2 and preferably 4 acres to grow trophy SMB where a natural food chain is used.

Everything sounded great until I read 'Gambusia'. Stay away from them. They will quickly displace any other small specie.

I'm echoing CJ's question. Where are you going to source Lake Chubsuckers?

There are a few places in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania where you can catch them yourself.

I personally wouldn't care if I had to go even further away to collect them. Just a handful of them in a pond with no predators will turn into many within a years time.

I could try to breed them indoors in an 8' stock tank. If I could be successful in getting just two pairs to spawn I could turn 4 fish into 10,000 pretty easily.

I don't need to purchase them. I'm more than happy to go the slow route just to have them in my pond.

That's why I ask questions here. I don't pretend to be an expert. I'll take all the advice I can get.

Im new at this but so far I am liking the gambusia. They are holding their own pretty good in a pond full of predators. As the water drops due to the drought the fhm are declining rapidly but it seems the gambusia are still holding strong and reproducing. Its been said numerous times on this forum that fhm are not going to be a permanent minnow species present in the pond so why are gambusia bad if they will be a long term forage species?

I don't think they are bad. However, they do have a reputation as nest robbers. But then, so do small bluegills and gizzard shad.

Well, I'm hoping that having the bluntnose minnows, banded killifish, and golden shiners are able to bear the load equally. I'm hoping that the smallest bass feast on grass shrimp instead of annihilating minnow fry.

Bass will eat minnows if available as soon as they can at about 1.5-2" which is the big benefit of using FHM at first stocking. Bass fingerlings will grow fast and soon loose interest in grass shrimp if small fish are available. Grass shrimp are primarily staples for panfish.

I added some Gams to my pond as well then read they were an issue and would take over any native species. Well considering the fish in my pond the FHM did not have a chance anyway.

Plus I have not seen and Gams since the hard winter we had a few years ago, maybe the -31 temps killed them or they were just eaten. I hade a couple of black striped top minnows as well but they are gone as well. At least I was able to enjoy watching them for one summer.

They are a neat fish to have in a tank as well, my daughter would feed it and have it trained to jump out of the water and nip her finger (or at least she thought she had trained it and I could not bare to tell her else wise).

I don't have my heart set on putting Gambusia in this pond. It sounds like they aren't a great idea from all of the feedback. So, It looks like no Gams for me.

Gambusia will not likely survive in your pond overwinter if the pond develops ice and has LMB.

I brought home a 5 gallon bucket of them from South Carolina when redid my pond here in central PA 3 years ago. Every spring I think they all died but by july they are all over the place. I did let them reproduce without predators for the first year. My GSH never took, end of the first year with LMB I have never seen one.

I don't want to be the guy who says that all his forage is gone in a year. I'm willing to dedicate HUGE areas of my pond to forage production, growth, and survival. People say that if you have too much cover in your pond that the bass will have a hard time feeding. Well, I would rather be the guy with millions of forage fish that aren't easy to catch than the guy with a mudbowl and no forage left.

Bill, this is strictly a smallie pond. If a largemouth ever ends up in my pound I'm putting a $100 bounty on it lol.

I figure that its a lot easier to manage a trophy smallmouth pond in New Jersey than a trophy largemouth pond. I only want to worry about harvesting bass. I don't need to be harvesting bluegills and other stuff too. If the pond gets overloaded with forage I'm sure I won't have any problems dealing with that lol.

Some minnow traps, a couple slices of bread, and a few hours of free time. If my shiners were overpopulating I could pull a few hundred out at a time, clip their tail fins, and toss them back in. My guess is that bass would make short work of them.

In NW OH which should have similar climate as NJ, and we can't get Gambusia to survive in ponds with some weeds and just yellow perch and no bass. Gambusia will survive in ponds in our area that do not freeze out and have no predators. I suspect the Gambusia do not do well with ice and any sort of predator. Their small size and 'southern genetics' could be a disadvantage in areas with ice cover. Your experiences with them will help provide more knowledge.

Plan on having some submerged vegetation for long term survival of minnows and shiners with SMB present. Soft rayed forage survial will have a lot to do with how well the SMB are able to recruit.

I'm nosey - where you getting your chubsuckers?? Other planned foragae should be no problem. Chubsuckers should do a lot to creating a great SMB pond.

I never planned on buying chubsuckers. I was just going to catch as many as I could and put them in a 10' x 20' x 2' indoor pond I have to see if I could get them to spawn so I could stock them in my own pond.

If they are really productive I'll raise them up and use them to feed the bass as well LOL.

I don't know why more people don't go that route.

If I had a largemouth pond I would do the same thing with tilapia and rainbow trout.

I wish you well in your endeavor. Things are not always as easy as they seem.

Heck, I can't even get fatheads established in my erosion settlement ponds. The bullfrogs eat them as fast as I can dump them in there. Last week, I again put a mix of black fatheads and rosy reds in two settlement ponds that are about 10 x 20, and three foot deep. The next day, not a one was found. Just bullfrogs and bullfrog tadpoles.

But, then I can't even keep minnows. I went to a local creek and got a batch of creek chubs last night for my catfish. When I got done fishing it was late, and I was too lazy to transfer them from the five gallon bucket to a holding tank. I just kept the aerator in the bucket. This morning there were only three left in the bucket. Most committed suicide last night by jumping out of the bucket. When the dog was let out this morning, he cleaned up the corpses just about before I figured out what happened.

The difference is that my ponds are indoors. It still gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter, but much more mild. It might get into the 80s in the summer instead of over 100 and the winter might dip below 50 every once in a while.

There are also no visitors indoors. There are no coons, cats, bullfrogs, turtles, herons, or jerks in general.

I'm willing to bet if you put those chubs in a big tank with plenty of vegetation that none of them would have jumped out LOL.

Also, if you lost all of your fatheads in one night I have to assume that you have a huge problem with cover and structure. Even when I dump a dozen fatheads into my Oscar tank some of them live for a few days hiding out in the artificial plants or the stones.

There are lake chubsuckers in NJ streams?? Did not know that. If you catch any just put a few 4-12 in your pond. They will eventually spawn if some weeds are present. LCS are supposed to be great for SMB ponds. CJ could have some finglings if you want to take a weekend outing drive to VA for them.

Bill, I see the LCS are listed as threatened in Ohio. If one was to get them into an Ohio pond by some legal means, would that create problems in control over your own personal management of the pond?

fish n chips,

This is one of the biggest problems with state depts and fish and game and what not.

When they can make money off of something it belongs to them. When it costs them money its not their problem.

For instance, I buy a hunting license every year to hunt the "state's deer". I have to pay the state for the right to harvest their deer.

If one of their deer wrecks my car it is no longer their deer. Its just unfortunate happenstance.

This is how all states operate. You will never change it.

My advice is to keep your personal pond management adventures to yourself and don't worry about it.

I have a pond with similar goals. My advice would be to stock some RES if they will survive your winter as their young will be a very beneficial forage for the SMB, they get larger than any of the other minnows you are stocking and will help push those 1.5lb smallies into 3+lbers.
Also stock your bluntnose/killifish/shiners/shrimp/chubs ASAP then wait at least a year before stocking the SMB. Three months before you stock the SMB add 1000 FHM. They will spawn prolifically in those three months but not so much that they will use up biomass and stunt the other forage. You want fatheads because they are slow and make easy targets for hungry small bass, they will help get your 4-6" smallies up to 8-10" where they can start focusing on the other forage.
Good luck with the chubsuckers, I hear they can be real tough to transport. I hope to add some myself shortly.

I planned on letting the forage cocktail sit for at least a year or maybe two before adding any smallies.

I don't think that the fatheads should be necessary. With the pond literally crawling with bluntnose, killies, shiners, chubs, grass shrimp, and crayfish I think that they might be a little overkill.

I'm not opposed to the idea, but I try to pick my forage species on where I am going to get the most return on my pond usage. For instance, grass shrimp are like free food in your pond. They fill in a niche that no one else is using.

People think that fingernail clams are a waste of time, but you know what? They feed on particulate crap that no one else is the pond can eat, and then they become a high protein food source for my crayfish, which are a cherished food source of my smallies.

Its all about building the food chain from the very bottom and finding a way to filter as much of the available nutrition in your pond into the species that you want to grow into trophies.