I have close to a acre pond. It is new and was stocked with 500 BG and 100 RE in April along with bunch of FHM. I will be adding 50/70 LMB and 50/70 HSB at a latter date. MY question is would the addition of 100 yellow perch be ok just to have some diversity in catch? My pond is in SW Virginia . Thanks

That may be a lot of fish in time for your carrying capacity. YP should work (at your location) but you may need to reduce the numbers of HSB , LMB and YP. Feeding will help with carrying capacity as long as your water quality is good. YP would need to go in early or be stocked at a size big enough to avoid predation.

Thank you for the advice. I am feeding and have a Texas Hunter feeder. Water is spring out of limestone. Hard Water. About 40 gal a min . I will cut back on the LMB and HSB. Would you do. 1/3 1/3 1/3 Maybe 40 of each ? FHM have done very well. 1000s Mabe millions. BG. Are just now big enough to spawn. As I see some working beds.

Thanks

Have you located pellet trained YP for stocking and what are the offered sizes or the place where you will get them? Is the goal basically a fishing and harvesting pond? Do the goals include growing bigger than average individuals and if yes which species?

I am thinking of adding some yellow perch to my 1/2 acre pond. At present I have about 25 Large mouth bass and 20-25 catfish (both in second year in pond) and 150 or so HBG. Will YP do ok in the hot summer water of Mid-Michigan? I checked the water today and it was 80 degrees. I would like to have the YP as an added feature to the pond and more food for the bigger fish. Will that work?

The yellow perch will thrive in MI ponds. However, adding YP with the intention of them creating more harvestable YP is going to be a low success in your current pond unless there are lots of weedbeds for the small YP to hide in. Reason being the YP will remain small for 3 yrs before they get big enough to avoid predation by LMB and CC. Three years is a long time trying to keep away from hungry predators with big mouths. Bass will get them during the day and CC will get them at night when YP settle to the bottom for rest. If you stock some and want them to survive stock ones at least 8" and 9"-10" is better and gives almost 100% survival. I've watched 16" LMB eat 8" yp. I learned all this back in the 1980's when first starting to work intently with YP.

Funky, I'm not an expert, but I have had YP in my pond in Norheast Missouri for two and a half years. I believe I have the northern strain (if there really are a northern and southern strain) YP in my pond. They are doing just fine. They hit the feeder every morning and evening. I believe they have had some survival for the last two spring spawns. My water temp yesterday was 86-87, and much colder at 6' depth. They are easy to clean, and delicious. There are some real YP pros on this site. You'll get great advice from them.

Take Cody's post as gospel [and proven science]...YP population likely not self sustaining in a LMB fishery without very significant vegetation. Will likely also require supplemental stocking of adult fish [9"+]. Can be done, but it will require a periodic investment.

My pond is 30 feet deep at the deepest point, one problem is the pond is never clear, it is muddy as it is a clay pond and in three years has not cleared, so would YP make it in such waters? Just looking at this from as many ways as possible, thanks for all the great input!!

Funky, you may want to read the Alum Kicks Clay Butt threads in the muddy waters section and do some jar testing on your pond's water. Only your fatheads will do well in muddy water and growth will be badly hampered for all other species.

As far as yellow perch, as all have said, they can do very well in your area. If after doing jar tests, your water is in fact muddy, I would seriously consider having it treated and cleared for long term water quality and fish health.

Funky - Turbid water, depending on visibility, could be a benefit to allowing the perch offspring to better survive predation by the largemouth. To my knowledge, that option has not been well studied. If you have the desire, give the stocking of YP into your 1 acre pond. If larger ones of beyond forage size (adults) are stocked, YP should survive well for several years based on several variables such as age of stockers, their food items, amount of cover and mouth gape size of predators.
The test success of the YP stocking will be to see how well they are able to recruit new yellow perch to survive and become 8" harvestable adults. Give it a try and keep us updated as to the yearly progress of your stocking experiment. Try to get us some pictures of the stockers. Also it would be very beneficial to all those interested is if you could include secchi disk readings of your pond as time passes and the lengths of your LMbass. All this will help document what the water clarity was over the course of the YP stocking project with sizes of largemouth present.

Secchi Disk Use and DIY versions.
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92624#Post92624

Thanks for the input, I will keep track of the YP, I put 100 YP 2-3 inch in June of this year. At the time the water was between 6-8 inches deep visible, and having a real bad algae bloom. Then at the end of June we had a 500 years type flood in Midland county about 11 inches of rain fell in about 9 hours, my 1/2 acre pond looked like a 2 acre pond and water ran in places it had never ran before, over roads that we have never seen in 45 years had water over them. So I not sure if some fish moved with the water or stayed deep. I do know I still have a good number of fish still feeding. Next spring I will add another 100 fingerlings. Today the water is clear enough to see about 12 inches and that is about as good as it gets, or so it has over the past 3 years. Thanks again, and I will keep up as time goes on, maybe this will be my little research project.