I just finished an awesome walleye dinner and it prompted me to make this post.......I have walleye in my little puddle and have been enjoying feasting on arguably the best tasting fresh water fish there is. Yes, they do not typically reproduce in ponds. I consider that a pro in my pond as I can control their numbers. In my area, advanced size walleye are available to ladder stock to avoid predation of LMB. Another pro IMO is they have a smaller mouth gap and tend to target fusiform shaped fish like YOY LMB and YP which helps with potential over population of those species while not being significant competition for the LMB.

My question is why would somebody with a BOW suitable for walleye and with availability not stock them in appropriate numbers? Maybe one of the most under utilized stocking options?

In my opinion the only two reasons not to stock them would be the cost and having to use a leader when you fish. The average pond owner may not be comfortable paying for a fish about twice the price as a LMB and have that fish not reproduce for them. I realize walleye are expensive to buy in the store or at a restaurant, but that could be one explanation. Also pond owners may not want to have to use a leader everytime they fish in fear of having a big walleye get on their line and cut it. Since leaders do limit a lures action.

I personally love fishing for and eating walleye. My only question is I like to swim in my pond and though I highly doubt they would bite me, my friends and family may be afraid to swim with walleye in the pond.

They (WE) can be considered pricey, I suppose - compared to CC. I just yesterday bought 50 WE for $3.00 each which is my 2nd year of my ladder stock program. I keep the WE in a separate pond from LMB so no issue with predation. Nearly everything in the WE/SMB pond are pisciform small gapped fish - WE, CC, YP, SMB, HBG and RBT. Man that was a tough combo choice. IMHO a few hundred dollars a year to keep me in WE for the years to come is no big deal. My local restaurant charges $23 for one 1/2 a small, small, small WE fillet. So far all is going quite well, stock is healthy and I do not and never have used leaders. I DO use hemostats to remove hooks and lures. My pond WE seem to fight every bit as good or better than the WE in Lake Erie which is where I am very near here in NE Ohio. BTW, for comparison SMB just cost me $4.00 to $6.00 each which is a good bit more money than WE. These are delivered prices which I think are fair for quality stock. I've never heard anyone getting bit in these parts by anything by certain breeds of gills.

I didn't use leaders when WE fishing in Lake Erie and almost never had any issue. Not my favorite fighting fish, but delicious!

Where I live there are very few hatcheries that raise WE and more of a demand than a supply so therefore the ones I've seen for sale are pretty pricey. Three dollars a piece seems very reasonable priced for WE I'd pay that for some. Also a leader probably isn't necessary, we just have always used them when we go fishing in Lake of the Woods in Ontario. We mainly did so because we were catching a lot of northerns when we were WE fishing and got tired of getting our line cut or nicked.

Yep, pike definitely require wire leader.

When we lived on the shore of Lake Champlain, my dad would sometimes take my younger brother & me on a pike trip. Dad says we called it "Northern Pipe."

Mark at Harbin fish farms 2:40 west of ya handles walleye. Most professional service/sales I know of in that area.

Alright I like this conversation. I been talking about doing this for a long time. Still wanting to split a order of Walleye.

Fully agree they are just like reeling in a log, but very tasty.

I think why most walleye are not stocked is I don't think they take to pellets very well. I guess in enough numbers and small enough puddle they would have to.

I heard Burbot is the best? Walleye hard to beat. We are looking to buy 1000 fry for about $30. Only draw back is we will have to stock in pond with only fathead minnows so other fish won't munch on them as they enjoy them also.

I don't use a leader when fishing for walleye either. Definitely not the cheapest fish to stock here either but I just think they are an awesome addition as a bonus catch; even if only stocked at 20/acre or so. Here is what I can buy them for at a local dealer.

3-5” 25 ea $ 1.75
5-7” 10 ea. $ 3.30
6-8” 10 ea. $ 5.40
7-9” 10 ea. $ 6.90

I will be stocking some more at 7 to 9 this spring. I'm going with the more advanced size in an effort to keep them from being expensive LMB snacks.

what kind of DO requirements do walleye have?

From:

https://www.nwrc.usgs.gov/wdb/pub/hsi/hsi-056.pdf

HABITAT SUITABILITY INFORMATION:
WALLEYE

Adult walleye can tolerate dissolved oxygen (DO) levels of 2 mg/l for a short time (Scherer 1971), but the greatest abundance of walleye occurs where minimum DO levels are greater than 3 to 5 mg/l (Dendy 1948). DO levels of < 1 mg/l are lethal (Scherer 1971).

Just in case this thread has started some of you folks thinking about stocking walleyes

I ran across this YouTube video that shows pretty much how I go about cleaning one for the table. The real key to making this easy IMO is using the zipper!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrLfEyxmd7c

And all this discussion about walleye prompted me to try walleye last night when enjoying a rare opportunity to go to a restaurant that serves it. It was spectacular! Really thinking about them as a preferred predator in my pond!

CC,

I don't think you will regret it!

What type of forage do you have for them in your pond?

Still trying to build forage. I had hoped for LCS but so far no sign of a successful spawn. I have stocked FHM multiple times but they are eaten before they spawn due to lack of cover

I have boat loads of GSH and have started to see my first few spawns of SFS this summer/fall. The crevice spawning devices have clouds of minnows around them.

I have young RES but I did not see spawning circles this year, saw them last year. I hope the adults are OK as I can't catch them.

I have some LES adults that I have caught but not many

I have adult YP but have been removing perch egg ribbons to try to keep a lid on how many young YP I have.

If I put WE in this year then I would probably leave the YP ribbons in place. If WE eat GSH then I have the fattest happiest pellet slurping GSH anywhere around.

Oh, and there is always a crop of goldfish young. I have the adult population down to about 40-50 and the kids have fun catching them, harvesting about 10-12 every time they go. I imagine one season of a predator (especially if we do SMB or LMB) and the GF will be gone.

Sounds like a feast made in heaven for WE! Well done!

Honestly this thread has made me think about throwing a few in at our place. I really like the fact they are not as DO sensitive as trout.

Wbuffet your lake should have SCADS of food for the WE. What would be cool would be if you stocked both YP and WE. The YP are a cold water fish and would produce thousands of small missile shaped fish for the WE to eat. YP also taste very good (as do WE) and for your kids the YP are very easy and fun to catch if the WE or trout prove harder to catch from shore.

I bet the YP would clean up on the crayfish, scuds and maybe the leaches.

I know leaches are a very popular WE bait as well.

I've been busy and got behind on reading my last issue of Pond Boss Magazine. I was catching up today and found a timely article for this discussion. Mr. Lusk authored,"Walleye, The Other White Meat." Good read and some good basic info on pond requirements for WE.

I am not interested in having anything that would reproduce besides Brook Trout. They are still my ultimate goal. WE sound perfect because they shouldn't reproduce, get big and are delicious!!

wb jr - if you add walleye to your mountain pond expect them to grow more slowly than other pond owners are seeing for walleye growth because abundant small fish will not be available as I recall about your pond. If you have FHM in the pond then walleye and trout would grow faster. In your cool clean water conditions with some rocky shoreline areas you could see some limited walleye egg hatching success.

Bill - I have a TON of FHM in the pond. FHM have been in there for a decade so extremely established. Also have crayfish. There are some rocky shorelines, but I would hope the WE did NOT reproduce. I am going to consider possibly adding 20-30 of them just for fun.

Rock substrate in 2-4' of water is good walleye spawning habitat but the element missing in "most" small ponds is wind/wave/current that is required to keep embryos from suffocating. I'm involved in walleye egg take in KS and we literally have to keep current flowing on water hardened eggs after removing the adhesive membrane or we can lose 5-10% before ever loading to go to hatchery. It takes a fairly good, consistent wind quartering into the rocky shore substrate or flow on a constant basis to have any hatch of any number. I would venture to guess your reproduction would be zero in most cases. It also requires a certain number of mature males (usually more than 1 or 2) releasing the hormone that triggers the female to actually release her eggs.
Edit: I do have some data on altitude and success rates, which may or may not apply, depending on the variables listed above. What is your pond elevation??

snipe, I'm curious, in northern mi there are larger lakes with what appears to be self-sustaining WE populations. One that I'm more family with is about 6 miles long and about 3 miles wild. IT is very deep, but the shore lines look just like any other lake, sandy, and calm. THe drop offs are pretty sudden and it goes very deep.

IF it is incredibly fussy for the conditions to be right and the eggs to hatch, how do the WE self sustain? I can't think of where in a big lake like that there would be enough current, waves or wind consistently to let the eggs hatch? I'm sure some areas get the prevailing winds, but there are plenty of calm weather conditions too.

I think there is one area where a stream flows into the lake, would that be the place where the WE are probably successfully spawning?

I did learn recently that the MI DEQ/DNR is putting about 20,000 stocked WE in every year.

Walleye are a native river species.. In most Lake/Res situations they resort to the most similar habitat to that of a river in-flow with sand/gravel/rock substrate, IF the proper river/in-flow situation is NOT present. The measure of flow, species present, etc., and variables we still don't understand are going to play a part.
We have a few Lakes here in KS that have a very small % of walleye reproduction in certain years where conditions are such that it works.
There are also a few lakes in central NE where this takes place to a very small degree.
In your example lake, if they are stocking 20,000 fish in that body size, I'm going to say those are fingerlings or possibly intermediates.. and doing so every year indicates to me there is little, if any natural recruitment.

Nagagami Lake in Ontario Canada is a walleye factory. My son lives up there an a co worker works at this lodge on that lake. He said he cleaned over 1000 walleye in the first three weeks up there.

Cheers Don.

We are at 10,000' and have quite a bit of wind. I definitely do not want reproduction so if there is a chance I will probably pass. For years my buddy has been trying to talk me into putting some in.

I have observed a very limited amount of successful walleye recruitment in a very few ponds as small as 0.75 acre. Rare, but it can happen when egg hatching is successful. When a few walleye eggs do hatch the slender fry/fingerlings have to endure lots of predation pressure to survive to adulthood. Anymore, I never say it won't happen.

I agree with Mr. Cody on "never say never".. If a dozen survivors make that gap and survive all odds, those survivers will be more conditioned to the environment they were reared in. I can say in most conditions we have data on walleye above 4000ft elevation, they are not sexually mature until Y5. Doesn't mean they can't have an early female in year 4, but it's very rare. Males are generally sexually mature in Y2, it would be very, very rare to have a Y1 male with milt.
Our higher elevation I have data on (7830 & 6412)reveals a recruitment rate of about 78% less than 2 lakes at 2738 & 3150 All 4 of these are impoundments on the same river basin with very similar fertility. The growth rates are affected by many factors but I'll give you those in comparison. Year zero fall samples show an average of 146mm (about 5.75") on High alt res data. On the 2 lakes near 3000', Year zero fall nets show about 188mm ave, (just shy of 7.5").
1.5 yr olds show an ave of 201mm (Shy of 8") & 267mm (10.5"). about 30-40% of these Y2 walleye at 3000' lakes show up in spring nets on dam during spawn as fertile specimens, at around the 11' mark.
At the higher lakes, data shows an ave of Y2 Males being 241mm (9.5") with no record of spermatozoa present. In 2016 we had a 311mm (12.25") male full of milt. we filleted, took otolith and found it to be a 5y male which is mid-life at the higher elevation but near end of life at the 3000' range. Y3,4,5 males at 3000' range show an ave. of 342mm (13.5"), 394mm (15.5") and 436mm (just over 17").
Not sure any of this is helpful but if your pond/lake is at 10,000', I seriously doubt your growth rates would exceed those of the 2 lakes I listed. With that being said, I feel you'd have 4 years of fishing to safely cull/harvest/remove a good number of potential trouble makers. Some walleye in locations at lower levels/warmer climates, can produce walleye that are sexually mature in 2 years.
I would NEVER want to recommend a stocking that could cause later undesirable effects, so keep in mind this is test net data, not a hard factual rule. One fish I would look at that would potentially provide the same table fare and an increase in annual growth rate would be Saugeye. No recruitment would ever rear it's head with no walleye present. Female saugeye eggs are viable and can be fertilized by male walleye and "could" hatch. these fish revert back to parent stock very quickly, usually in 2 generations, but if no walleye are present, that is something you would never have to worry about.
Hope I didn't bore you to tears.
EDIT: I should also add the high elevation lakes are low recruitment situations, it's just not good percentage wise, for stockers or natural. i'm sure there are other factors in play that we are not aware of as well. I have zero data on Saugeye at altitude either, no idea how they would handle it.

Been a long time since I have been on, or posted. Have a 5/8 acre pond in western NY that has a 12 ft, and 17 ft hole. I have WE, BCP, YP, 3 CC, 7 KOI, various sunfish, FHM, GS, and a few white suckers.

I have had limited WE reproduction in the past. Not sure on the last 2 years with limited time to fish. More work on property than I can keep up with at times. At Mr. Cody`s suggestion I did add cobblestone 6"-8" on ice and it made little reefs. Saw small WE before this, but have 2 strong springs in pond, and a lot of wave action.

I have surprisingly not had any over population problems with BCP, or sunfish so WE, and YP doing a good job. Friend caught 3 14" YP, a 17" WE, and a 13" BCP while I did projects. I went out after him for an hour and nothing LOL! Wish I would have kept better records of sizes, and #`s of fish stocked.

What was the bottom of your pond like in the beginning?

I am thinking of moving my wind generator back to my pond for a power source to run a pump. With storage batteries.

This would be an extremely interesting project. Please post pics, etc if you do it!

I checked the site & was impressed. Thanks!

My Ohio brother came back with beaucoup walleye fillets from a Lake Erie trip. Apparently the Erie WE have had three great annual spawns in a row and are doing awesome! My bride & I ate one of the fillets tonight & it was delicious.

PS Don't tell anybody, but I even heard rumors of 6 lb plus SMB...

John bottom was blue clay, and gravel.

That is same as mine. Did you build some kind of reef?

Been away at cabin, no internet there. When we had thick ice I got a couple of tons of 8" or larger rock. Took a wheelbarrow and made several piles a couple feet high. In spring I used my underwater camera for ice fishing to check it out. When the stones fell thru the ice I had little reefs at least 18" high. I did have some reproduction before doing this. Not sure I`m currently having reproduction as haven`t had time to really check things out.

Thank you for your information. Sounds promising.

New to this site. Spectacular! I recently acquired several lakes of varying sizes in southwest Indiana. The largest is a 50-acre gem that maxes out at 81 feet deep. Clear and already full of bass, panfish and catfish. I prefer walleyes, so I immediately stocked 200 5-7 inch fish. Afterwards, I spoke with the DNR fisheries biologist who said I should have only put in 1 per acre! That sounded crazy to me, but I guess I'm glad I couldn't afford the 2000 I wanted to put in. I find no forage there other than a very healthy panfish population and lots of invertebrates.

What are everyone's thoughts on additional stocking as well as growth rate for walleyes in clear water like this? Lots of wooded islands line the shore and several submerged grassy humps for cover. FYI, I also threw in 20 pounds of FHM and 70 10 inch smallmouth my supplier gave me cheap-ish at the end of the season.

I think 4 WE(walleye)/ac is acceptable especially since you stocked the 5"-7" sizes. The smaller stocker WE are,,, the lower their chances of survival due to early post stock predation from other larger fish until the WE become established. A 6" WE has to live a many months 24/7 before it is out of the prey size for a 16"-18" LMB.

An existing body of water is usually at normal carrying capacity, and without prior to stocking the removal some existing predators, the stocker fish have a hard time surviving due to the "full house" of current well adapted residents who have a large survival advantage over any 'newbees'. You will be very lucky if 1 WE/ac survives. Future angler catch per unit effort of WE will tell the rest of the story.

In existing water esp with mixed sizes of LMB, I always encourage stocker walleye to be closer to 8"-10" long for best chance of survival when LMB are present. An 8" WE is still not much bigger body cross section than a cigar; easy meals for 12"+ LMB and 18"+ CC. Next time you catch a 12" LMB look at its mouth size gape compared to the diameter of a cigar 5"-7"WE.

IMO the 10" SMB have a better chance of survival compared to the 5"-7" WE. It would have been better to remove around 50-100 LMB-CC prior to SMB-WE stocking. This would have helped a lot in food availability and predator pressure reduction. The 20 pounds of FHM were likely very quickly consumed by the residents while the newbees were becoming accustomed to the new 'digs' and trying to not become easy food. Large predators usually choose larger prey compared to prey smaller than optimum or preferred size. Your CC are efficient low light predators whereas LMB are efficient variable light predators while both are bottom oriented which is where the WE and SMB primarily inhabit. Interaction is important in who survives in the prey-predator behavior.

Angler catch surveys will reveal the survival success of your new fish.

Thanks Bill. I was afraid I was throwing money away with the walleyes. I knew the FHM were going to be an expensive snack. I'll be interested to see if any walleyes show up in a year or two, for sure. Not that it will create a fishable population, but I may start catching legal walleyes (14 inches) at a state lake 5 miles away and transplanting them into my lake. But that will likely not amount to more than 10 or 15 a year. Walleye fishing is very limited here, and they are tough to consistently catch in numbers.

Don, have you done a survey of the fish population and relative weights? If you have skinny LMB, may want to harvest some.

Bill, Only a very non-scientific survey. I should have someone come in and do that professionally. These are unique lakes that were coal pits originally, but filled and established as lakes 70 years ago. Nearly 15 feet of clarity with a secchy disk. I caught a 7 pound LMB and some 3-5 pound fish last spring, but then not another bass over a pound or many small ones at all from June to October. The LMB I have seen are healthy, but these very deep, clear lakes provide lots of places for big fish to disappear most of the year.

Why are such low WE stocking numbers/acre recommended? Is there a concern the WE will out compete the LMB for forage? I originally stocked 11 WE in my 1/2 acre which also has LMB and have had no issues that I know of. My current plan is to ladder stock 10 more 9+ inch this spring.

Don, I'm sure no expert, but it sounds like your larger LMB head deep down to the thermocline in summer. Night fishing might be an option, especially with your clear water. Also, perhaps you could create some structure that runs from, say, 15 feet up to 5 feet. Just a thought.

Lower stocking numbers of WE are historically used to imitate what are found in natural populations. This is not to say that stocking higher numbers of WE/ac is bad or not to be done. However in a mixed fish community I am not confident more WE that a few per acre will thrive in a existing mixed fish community especially when habitat is not optimum for WE and competition from larger fish is 'strong'. Abundant usable forage numbers allow WE to thrive and in a mixed fish community competition for small forage fish is 'strong'.

Also water clarity with secchi disk reading of 12ft-18ft in indicative of low productivity water which does not support a high poundage of predator fish; more in the range of 10-20 lbs per ac for infertile habitats.

I agree with Bill. You can easily get to a point (very fast) where introducing another predator species will both inhibit growth of the walleye and just deplete the forage base so quickly, the existing population of Both Predator and Prey suffer. If conditions are right, a few could be introduced but generally speaking to make this work in your favor, it about requires a "restart" from the beginning. It needs to be planned for. Walleye can be used as a tool to manage certain species, but certain conditions would need to be present to benefit. My 2 cents..

Anthropic, I agree with your assessment that larger fish retreat deep in the summer months. I hope to make habitat structures to sink in deeper water this winter for sure. I tried using weighted wacky rigs and senkos on some 60 foot drop-offs but struggled to get them past he 1 pound bass near the top.

And interesting take on the lower fertility of clear water. That's what I thought too, but the state biologist said the opposite. He said that the clear water allows deeper sunlight penetration and therefore more water with habitat and oxygen. It will be fun to determine it's fertility over the years.

I think the larger issue here is that this is a big lake with a lot of water. It is cost prohibitive to any major fix by myself without breaking the bank. I love all your input either way.

There's a reason the water is so clear, generally.. Lack of nutrients (fertility) is normally hand in hand with clear water-naturally occurring. Fertile waters tend to grow all sorts of organisms that "color" the water.

A data point....There is a decent walleye lake near me in a state park. The lake is 147 acres. They stock 50 WE/acre every year. They estimate the harvest at 54 lbs/acre/yr. Their last survey showed 80% of the WE caught are 14+ inches. The lake also has BCP, BG, GSD, LMB, CC, YP and they also stock one muskie/acre yearly.

That's a perfect example of maintaining a supply of WAE for angler opportunity, and as stated 54lbs per acre is being removed at 14"+. That's a 1lb fish (approx.)
I hope I didn't mislead someone on the WAE situation, because stocking at this rate is taking into account this is an annual repeat, which some other predator would likely fill if WAE were not present. It also means any other predator biomass is lower as a result. I'm probably confusing more than just myself here but to stock densities such as this, something else is affected in another way. LMB are lower in number, as are YP, and I'm sure the BCP get some control by WAE.
This is a good example of rates that would wreck a more controlled and established pond environment. I hope I cleared that up..??

The state biologist really did not say the opposite when he said

What the biologist said was true but more habitat and oxygen does not mean that more fish food is present compared to more fertile water (greenish). More fertile water & more productivity means more fish food per unit of water as in enriched cloudy with a greenish hue from lots of microorganisms present (productivity), usually phytoplankton. The amount of productivity is on a scale or range from essentially none (clear swimming pool) to hyper eutrophic pea (soup green).

What he was saying is with clearer water, it produces deeper oxygen causing more space for fish to live because the oxygenated water layer is deeper but not necessarily more is food present. There is more volume/space for fish to live. What good is more volume or space if production of food is lacking due to lower concentration of nutrients (phytoplankton) that grow the fish food? More space can provide more benthic organisms but not necessarily more phytoplankton-rotifers to feed fish fry. If fish fry do not grow larger, high numbers of fry won't survive to eat the larger foods. Generally the clearer the water is,, the fewer or less food items that are present. Lack of food present results in fewer fish that can survive and flourish (carrying capacity) per acre. Productivity or fertility is measured by how much algae/zooplankton/macroinvertebrates are present in each unit volume (milliliter, ounce, quart, gallon) of water.

Bill, Well put and your assessment is likely spot on. To his credit, I think that was probably what the biologist said, along with lots of other observations. What is curious to me, however, is that it is nothing to see schools of hundreds of panfish in every part of the lake, and common to routinely catch lots of 10 and 11 inch bluegills and red ears all summer. Like I said as well, the bass I find in the spring can be very large and healthy looking. I hear there are big cats in there, but I just haven't had time to fish for them yet. I see clouds of something suspended in deep sections, which might be crappies, but may also be smaller forage fish (I'm hoping). The locator I currently use there isn't sophisticated enough to distinguish.

I guess the real question for me is what, if anything, can I dip to make it even better? I was hoping adding some walleyes was a good start.

Mr. Mulligan, Something I've found as a good catfish "finder" is a 1 gal jug, 2ft of nylon line and a Kayle style hook. a 3-4" panfish with the tail fin cut mostly off. A night or 2 of floating around on the pond in 65deg+ water should show you an example of whats swimming around.

Thanks Snipe.

You may also want to consider 1 tiger musky per acre.

Now that would be an awesome fish to add as a bonus catch! I would probably only stock 1 per every 2 or 3 acres though to keep them from dominating the fishery.

If the 50 acres has little fishing pressure or little harvest, a low nutrient clear body of water can have what seems a lot of fish with a fairly low medium productivity close to what we call mesotrophic. Clear water with a fairly deep thermocline could likely support trout. Have any trout ever been stocked in the lake? They would stay deep during mid-summer and be easily available to anglers in water 5-18ft deep spring, winter, and fall. Medium large bass & poossibly large CC could be cropping the 3.5"-5" BG resulting in numerous larger BG. Deep clear water could be supporting a thick layer of crustacean zooplankton that would feed the BG. Lots of filter feeding zooplankton can maintain clear water and a healthy fishery with numerous panfish.

Great minds think alike. I already talked to my fish supplier about getting ten tiger musky to plant next fall. I want to be careful about stocking too many predators, before I really understanding the forage base.

Bill, I wish there was more history available for the lake. Always privately owned for 70 years by the coal company who sold it to me. They knew nothing other than "there are fish in there." They were correct. Any harvest or stocking history is unknown, but I am glad/surprised to say I don't believe there are any rough fish in the lake. Beavers, otters and muskrats are my biggest pest issue. I thought about trout, but personally prefer catching and eating walleye to every other fish, including what we musky/walleye guys call green carp (LMB).

" including what we musky/walleye guys call green carp (LMB)."

The musky - trout would be primarily surprising bonus fish. Walleye could be stocked at high enough density to serve as a fairly common sport fish. IMP the more LMB you are able to remove from the lake the better the WE would succeed/flourish. In my experience WE do not compete well with the aggressive nature of LMB.

Just a note that the biggest problem seen in lakes , ponds etc. is a lack of sufficient food for top end predators. We often seem to focus on the predators and not the prey. No predator will do well without enough food of the right size and at the right time. A substantial forage base is critical. It can be live forage and/or pelleted feed but having enough is necessary and often underestimated.

1. Don't taste as good as panfish.
2. Don't fight as good as panfish/bass.
3. Cost more than panfish/bass.
4. Don't reproduce.

Just my opinions, I would never stock them in any pond.

And anyone can have success with panfish/bass to some extent.
My opinion on not tasting as good as panfish could be disputed..
WAE also become fairly active and feed fairly aggressively starting in the low 40's..

People have different goals , likes and ideas and that is a good thing.

That is why we share them here and bounce ideas off the Forum.

Over the years the ideas have run the entire spectrum. Some have worked exceptionally well some have failed and some have resulted in things none of us expected. In almost every case we have learned something new.

And sometimes the learning process IS the end game. As we retire and no longer have an active work life, we have to find novel ways to entertain ourselves. Seeking out off the wall projects sometimes fills that need. We might even know ahead of time it likely will not be the "best" but do it anyway just for the heck of it. And low and behold, somewhat by accident, find out it was better than we imagined.

Kind of how my whole pond experience turned out.

Lot of truth there. The learning is at least as entertaining as the catching.