Hello everyone
i am looking for forage, there is not much in my lake. i would like to start by stocking a large amount of zooplankton/insects, FHM crayfish and any other forage species that will survive in the cold climate of northern michigan.

i have looked into smith creek farms in new york, they carry the paper shell crayfish, fhm and i think its a zooplankton called daphnia. i have a read a ton about the crayfish and FHM but have never seen the daphnia mentioned on here. are they any good? how much should i get for a 6 or 7 acre lake? i have looked at nearly every fish farm within 250 miles of my lake and am unable to find any forage other than FHM. are there other companies i can look into for other zooplankton or insects to stock my lake with that will tolerate the cold winters? thanks

What are the forage going to be feeding? Lm, sm, shark? Lol.

Bg are used for forage for some species of predator, yp are another popular one. Don't know what to use for the shark, obnoxious neighbors maybe?

Cmm

oops, I have YP right now in the lake and plan to add either SMB or trout in the spring. Im not sure what other predators i will add yet i have not set a plan yet id just like to get the forage started especially the zooplankton/insects

If I understand correctly, your lake is a mature BOW. IMHO The plankton should be there all on it's own if the water will support it. FWIW My first step would be a thorough water test and go from there. You may have PH, alkalinity, fertility, etc. issues that you will need to identify and correct if you are sure you have a problem at the very base of the food chain, i.e. plankton.

Just my 2 cents. Please keep us posted.

Bill D.

your right, im going to look into get some qualities done. i just emailed a lab in my area and we will work on it. any information i should know about taking samples? time of day, location (surface, near bottom in deeper part, near the bank?) or even time of year? (winter since i may be dealing with winter-kill?)

I am definitely not a pro but, if my internet was down so I could not get to PBF and the real pros, I would go out in my puddle, away from shore a good bit, take my sample bottle upside down and stick it down as far as I could reach (a couple of feet if long arms), turn it over to fill and put the cap on, then bring it up. I would think that would be a good place to start.

Yep, that'll work. But I generally just do it at the shore. No idea whether it makes a difference.

Richard, like was said, if you first focus on water quality, the rest of the things will come a lot easier.

Like trying to grow a nice lawn without fertilizer or water. Without having the basic needs of the lawn taken care of, it won't grow very well.

Hi Richard

What are your goals for your fishery? Are there species present? What is the age of your bow? Maximum depth? Is there aquatic vegetation present - if so, how much? If you can provide these details, we can help direct you on forage base establishment.

Ponds have phytoplankton blooms. Zooplankton graze on plankton. You do not need to buy daphnia. We can focus instead on minnow, shiner, maybe crayfish and shrimp.

Let us know, we'll help you get there.

There are yellow perch and white suckers currently with small minnow sized fish that sit on on the bottom in shallow water around the banks. Back in June I caught a Crayfish in my creek and let it go in my lake when I did I saw 3 more in the shallows of the lake I'm not sure if they were crayfish or shrimp. The lake was dug from a swamp in 1994 which is the year I was born so I'm as old as the lake haha. The deepest part is 23 feet which I believe they dug 25 so I must not have a huge problem with muck. As for vegetation there is a good amount, I have never seen FA even considering there's a swamp 20 ft away with it. I'm not sure the weeds I'm kicking myself for not getting pictures. I will be there next weekend so I will document all them. Last weekend I flew my rc plane over the lake with a camera and you can make out where the plants are

https://youtu.be/iPyAJqeT6QE

What are your goals for the fishery? What species are you interested in establishing? Do you know the population of the YP and sizes present?

Beautiful looking BOW, congrats.

hmm, personally my goal would have less than 10 pike all male so they cant reproduce and buy new ones when needed. But i understand the lake is on the smaller side for pike and i need to first establish a larger forage fish population, i am considering SMB or Trout. My uncle spends nearly every weekend at the cabin doing other stuff at the property and has agreed to finance it and he agreed he would like to see SMB or trout and even went far enough to say we could build a makeshift creek with a pump so the trout spawn.... short term goals consist of setting up aeration for the winter months, getting water quality tested, and getting some minnows in there. My uncle says we stocked them 20 years ago and im guessing one winter may have killed them all off because i have seen no sign of them. the YP are alright in population, i really should get into charting them but id say anywhere in the lake you drop a line within 2 or 3 minutes youll have one. mostly stunted with a few pushing 7 or 8 inches. i caught 6 last weekend that were about that size hanging around the christmas trees that i placed back in June.

Hey Richard,

I want to make sure I have this right. You have a pond heavily populated with YP and nothing much else, no predator for those perch and no minnows that you can see. Correct?

Correct Bill. We once had trout and minnows but i believe the winter killed the minnows and the trout never reproduced with no creek running to it.

I am not a pro but I suspect the YP ate all the minnows over time and are now living off their own spawn and whatever other aquatic life than can find. My 2 cents...I would make water testing and addressing the YP over population my top priorities.

IMHO How you address the YP issue has several paths...how deep is your uncle willing to dig in his pockets and how quick you want it solved will determine which path you take.

Don't know if you have seen this, but here is a link to the PDF list of licensed aquaculture facilities in Michigan. You need to go down to where it says List of Licensed Aquaculture Facilities in Michigan. A PDF will open.

Michigan Aquaculture

The bait companies may be able to get you anything they have on their list for feeder fish, but you have to call first and see what is available. Otherwise, some fish farms may have what you are looking for.

Hope this helps.

you know im not sure which way im going to go. i have heard that lime will kill off all of the fish from this website and my uncle does spend a lot of time liming his farm fields so im sure it will not be hard to pull that off. but on the other hand if we decide on a predator for the perch i feel it would be better to leave them alive. it all boils down to what my family decides on together and like you guys have mentioned how much money they are willing to spend. i have been fishing the lake hard while i have been there the few times and all the smaller perch i kill while leaving the big ones in there while adding structure other than weeds. which next weekend i plan on adding more structure i would like to build some type of structure with a couple bricks and logs around 6-10 inches wide and about 8 feet long so i will definitely update on that along with the water test.

The lime that is put on the fields is completely different from the lime that is used to sterilize ponds.

If you want the Yellow Perch in there, you can stock predators on top of them.

I would do research on aeration systems. No sense spending any $$ stocking more fish if they will winterkill. Yellow Perch can survive lower levels of O2 than many other fish, that could be the reason why they are in there too, and not the trout.

Well good thing I mentioned it and got corrected before I messed something up haha. I have been coordinating with my 3 uncles and apparently our old aerator is in our barn so hopefully next weekend when I'm up there I can get it running and hook it up for winter time. I believe they left the diffuser in the lake so I'm probably going to end up replacing that it's been sitting there I would think over 10 years. I also plan to add some more structure next weekend so I will update with pictures on my progress as I go.

I'm glad you are not the pilot on my air trips. When at the lake get some actual depth measurements. Go to this link and measure the size of the pond. We need to know the acres.
http://www.acme.com/planimeter/

Buy some minnow traps and bait them with bread and or cat/dog food. Find out what the small "minnows" are. "There are yellow perch and white suckers currently with small minnow sized fish that sit on on the bottom in shallow water around the banks."
Suckers do not spawn in a pond; they are stream spawners. Are there small suckers and is the creek connected to the pond???. Use the minnow traps to check what fish are in the adjacent creek. Your uncle's may know of other local creeks or beaver ponds to trap to collect your own minnow broodstock as forage fish. You just need to know which ones to keep and restock that will spawn in the pond. We can help with that info.

IMO don't focus on trying to get trout to spawn. Consider them put and take. Stocker trout are pretty cheap and you would only need to add $50-$110 (6"-10") periodically to keep a good trout fishery going in that pond. Crashing your RC plane probably cost more than $50 for fixes. A few predators in that pond will make it into a very good fishery with the clear water situation especially if you install an automatic feed and use trout food. Imlay City fish farm should have pellet trained perch and maybe a few other species. A few walleye (4-8/ac initially) would help thin out the smaller perch. Walleye will not spawn which is good so you don't get too many predators that stunt to be slow growing. With winter kill you may need to periodically add more walleye & trout. SMB will reproduce to possibly overeat the forage fish (YP&minnows). You don't want that to happen. Adding fish is always easier than getting too many of them out.

Richard,
if you have time, use this tool to zoom in and plot points around the perimeter of your pond. See what the result is using a zoomed in view (as big as fits in screen you have to get all the points in on the screen) and then compare to Bill's tool (acme link above)
I'm curious how well they correlate?

Google Area calculator tool

I was actually working on getting my pilots license I took a break because my mom was sick and I had a few other problems going on but I plan to start back up in January.

As for the measurements I have a removable sonar/fish finder I attach to my Jon boat to get depths. And for size I use Google Earth to measure which I believe is pretty accurate.

I uploaded the picture of the white sucker back in March to here and the group consensus was it was a sucker. I still have the picture but it won't upload from my phone so when I get to a computer I will upload it.

I have the standard minnow trap and these minnows that sit on the bottom are definitely to small to catch in one I was catching them in dip nets and I will take pictures when I am there next weekend.

The creek head is about 1000 feet from the pond. The same underground creek feeds the lake, up before the property starts the creek forks like a Y with one going to the lake (underground) and one going to the east of the lake (the 1000 ft) and surfaces. It runs into a wetland directly off the north property line which goes back underground, comes back up into another wetland then forms a creek running to burt lake.

In the creek, I have caughten 1 large cray fish, maybe 120 minnows, unknown number of tadpoles, and another minnow I'm not sure the species. As with the white sucker I will add a picture of the minnow when I get home from work. I also believe the 120 minnows are fat heads. I don't have pictures but will be trapping the creek again next weekend so I will get pictures

I am heading home now should be an hour drive hate the south Florida traffic but I Definitely will use it tonight

so i just measured it and the difference was about 1/10 an acre. my first measure was actually 6.666 acres, second measure was 6.544 acres. I feel operator error is to blame

I have attached the "white sucker" i caught back in february, havent seen any of them since. I tried getting my mystery creek minnow to upload but its a .jpeg and I dont know how to change it to .jpg, anyone know?

Hocus Pocus:

It depends...open it on your desktop and then click "save as" depending on the software, it may allow you several choices for format to save the image. If it does .jpg may be one of them.

It did not, I managed to get it into a gif then you couldn't see the fish once I uploaded it so I deleted it. I'll see if I can get onto my old photo bucket and link to it tonight

Creek minnows of 120 are likely small creek chubs or if you are lucky maybe bluntnose minnows which are a great minnow for your pond with YP and possibly walleye/trout. FHM do live in creeks, but are not often the dominant minnow present at least in MI-OH-IN.
If you get a secchi disk reading I can provide an estimate of how many total pounds of fish your pond will produce or support. Pellet feeding will increase that total fish poundage. Pellet feeding will be easier and better for your fishery and water quality compared to trying to increase the plankton bloom with lime and fertilizer.

I would guess 120, but not at once. I trapped the creek in march, april, and June, with maybe 3 days each. I think one time I had about 20 at once but the average would be about 10-15 with checking once or twice a day. I plan to use a secchi disk next weekend when I am there. I wish I had pictures of the minnows. I am also considering a feeder, the only thing worries me is during winter when there is ice I won't be able to feed. Any thoughts on that?

Now that I looked at some pictures on the Googler, I may have been wrong and they may in fact be bluntnose minnows. I really need a few pics of them because the baby creek chubs and blunt nose look similar

Is this one of the fish that you are talking about? I put the picture in your earlier post on page 1.

This was the fish brought out of my lake ice fishing mid February. Above my post they said it's probably not a white sucker since they are spawning in the lake but that's what I was told back in March in another post on here

Edit: this is the post that mentioned it is a white sucker
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=31309&Number=405192#Post405192

Chances are greater that someone used live bait in the pond and the sucker was an escapee rather than it was hatched in the pond. White suckers spawning in a pond is not impossible but it is very unlikely. If they are spawning in the pond you should be able to catch lots more of them. Small white suckers readily enter minnow traps that are baited with bread &/or cat/dog food.

I just found a video from I think it's from my may trip of these fish maybe spawning? They were in about 6 inch of water and had holes dug beneath the weeds I didn't even remember I had this video.

https://youtu.be/Ub8Hmxzkn0g

If I remember right there were anywhere from 40 to 60, some right here a school deeper and a school doing the same thing about 75 feet away

Video clarity is way too out of focus to recognize the type of fish. If you have white suckers spawning in the pond you are in a very elite class. Many fish farmers would like to know how to spawn suckers in a pond. Small suckers are excellent forage for walleye and SMB.

Yeah it was off my phone and I had to zoom in, when I would walk closer they would all go deep. But they definitely were the same fish as the pic from ice fishing.

i was reading through this post and just saw this, thank you it will help alot!