Hello all, new to the forum. I have been reading through different posts...but haven’t seen this dilemma.

Just finished with a one acre 10 foot deep pond behind cabin. On southern pasture, building a 4 acre 20 foot deep.
Flathead can get big and eat the bass. What about two different ecosystems for two different types of fishing?

Bass and flathead are the desired ones...with two ponds, how would you plan on stocking? I’ve read a bunch, but would like to hear from those who have managed ponds for a bit. Looks like crappie is a no go.

What cover would you recommend?

Tia for your response.

Crappie are not at all recommended for a pond. A bluegill population feeds the bass. Flatheads will get big and eat all the bigger bass.

Thanks, John. That seems to be what I’m reading...what do you think about a pond for flathead...then the other for bass?

You would still need a bluegill population to feed the flatheads, and some small bass to control the small bluegill/feed the flatheads. From what I understand, flatheads will not feed train.

Welcome from another Missourian! It's nice to read about someone looking at a Flathead Pond. It is extremely rare that someone talks about it, let alone tries it. My novice opinion is that it should be pretty easy, BUT it will take time and once the flatheads are of impressive size...that will be relatively short lived.

If I were to try the flat head pond, I would stock FHM's first to build the forage for the BG and LMB. Then stock the BG and LMB (and RES) so that it would overpopulate and stunt within a few years. The sooner this happens the sooner the flatheads can go in. The longer it takes the better the bass fishing will be. Once the BG and LMB have overpopulated the pond, put in flatheads that can consume the smaller classes of stunted fish. The flatheads will grow without mercy for a few years. You would have the greatest flathead pond in the world! Can you tell this would be a dream of mine. From what I have read, the flatheads would eat themselves out of forage in short order if stocked in high enough numbers. Once the the BG and LMB forage becomes scarce, the flatheads will start to stunt themselves. You would want to harvest the cats before "skinny" sets in and start over.

If my small HBG and HSB pond ever gets stunted and/or out of whack, I will consider sourcing some flatheads in the 2-3 pound range to continue the cycle. 10 flatheads in my 1/4 acre pond would be about right to yield a few more years of fun fishing.

I do not think that one could sustain the forage base in a pond to continually stock flatheads unless they kept the stocking numbers ridiculously low. I would bet that a standard pond could host a flathead or two that on occasion would break a line, but once enough were put in to target the rest of the fishery would suffer.

Just my thoughts.

I'm curious if the bighead and silver carp that have invaded our streams would be something a guy could transfer to a privately owned flathead pond as forage?

They're easy enough to catch in great numbers. I use them for garden fertilizer and have never tried to get them home alive, but if they would survive transport it might be a way to feed a flathead pond.

I wasn't really thinking outside of BG and LMB for cat forage, but bucket stocking anything that you can get your hands on in large quantities could be a potential food source even though it might not be self sustaining. I wonder if those types of carp would be likely to outgrow the flatheads? I don't know much about them.

I know that a big one can knock you out of the boat if you run up a stream that they've infested.

They do grow quite large, but being plankton eaters I wouldn't think they'd get enough groceries to outgrow the flatheads, assuming they were sized right when added to the pond. Also, being plankton eaters, I don't think they'd be good for a pond if you were looking any sort of self-sustaining forage base.

Hopefully somebody that knows what they're talking about will chime in on this one.

Gizzard shad for a self sustaining population of forage.
Thoughts?
Heppy

I'm sitting here wondering why you wouldnt want to put crappie in a pond intended for flathead reering. They are famous for overpopulating in ponds and I would think that is something you'd want. They can grow into the 4# range if the forage is there.

Flathead ain't fussy about what they suck into that great big mouth, and they will undoubtedly be the apex predator in a pond, so my thinking is BG, LMB, and CP are all prime forage candidates.

I agree Mike, one could even add GSF along with the crappie. I still think that a successful Flathead FISHING pond would need plenty of cats (to increase catch rates to a fun level), but would eventually run out of forage if it was not ladder stocked with larger and larger forage as the years went by.

A rudimentary example of GSF reproduction...1/4 acre pond silted in to being only 2 foot deep across. No fish to begin with and plenty of small crawdads. About 1 dozen small "creek fish" were stocked in the summer that survive the winter and the following fall the pond was drained for renovation. There were thousands of GSF ranging from 1" to 3". In conjunction with FHM, the GSF could make for a great jump start for a Flathead pond.

I love me some FH but prefer river raised flathead meat 2 to 1 over lake FH, that being said I doubt that a person could stock enough forage fish in any small body of water that the FH would not eventually decimate if they were allowed to reach any size or any reasonable number of them. a person might be able to sustain them tho by adding forage that was easily obtainable, like Asian carp, on a regular bases. a local pond that I fish in, the owner had dropped a couple small FH in back in the day, about three in a 2 1/2 acre BOW, and they kept the crappie populations to almost nothing, till we finally removed them, now you can actually catch some crappie in there. I am interested in how it works if you do try it.