Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Stocking my own private lake

Hi everyone,
I know this is a pond forum but the knowledge on here is leaps and bounds better than any other site I’ve found out on the internet so I thought I’d give this a try.

We own 600 acres of land up here in SW Quebec here in Canada. On our property we have a lake that is about 68 acres in size and has a maximum depth of 88 fow. Back in the 50s, this lake used to have Speckled Trout but they are no longer in there. We’ve put fish traps out and can confirm we have tons of minnows (dace, sunfish and yellow perch). I’ve been mapping the lake using my Garmin Fish Finder that is also equipped with Panoptix Live Scope and can confirm that I have encountered over 50 schools of 2-300 4-8” yellow perch.

5 years ago, we decided to put 200 10-12” Speckled Trout and 3000 2-3” Speckled Trout thinking they would survive as they did in the 50s. Nope. That failed. We caught a few the first year but nothing after. Not one fish. That was money thrown out the window.

Now we are ready to try again and we are looking for ideas. Given the YP population is more than settled in the lake, we had ideas of stocking Walleye and/or Black Crappie. Also wouldn’t be against re-stocking some type of trout is someone could explain what happened.

So here’s my question, what would you stock in this lake and why?

Note: This lake also gets about 24” of ice during the winter months and we’d love to ice fish it as well.

Thanks in advance!
D

Dirik, welcome to Pond Boss.

Being from Texas, I can’t imagine 2 ft of ice.