I stocked my 1 acre pond approximately 3 months ago. I put in 100 channel cats, 100 bass, 400 bluegill and 200 hybrid bluegill and 10 lbs of fatheads. About a month ago I added another 50 cats and 50 bass and 5 more lbs of fatheads. All fish were fingerlings. Do I have any fatheads left? I saw one minnow amongst the fish food recently but rarely see a minnow and the sunfish have started coming to the fish food. The fish look healthy and not starving. Should I add more fatheads?

You will be wasting your money to add fatheads. They swim so slowly that they become fish food quickly. Fatheads are for stocking before or when you first add predatory fingerlings to your pond. In a perfect world, you add fatheads and brim, let them grow and multiply for a year or so, and then add your predatory fish, such as bass. The bass will grow fast with so much food. But within a few months, you will have no fatheads and will be trusting the brim to make lots of babies to feed the bass. The point is that adding fatheads to an established lake is a quick, expensive snack to your fish.

Nick, thanks for the reply. At $9 lb I will save that money. Would you suggest a different forage species for the other fish?

Bill,
Add not a fish. Nurture yours. Your lake has a committment already, with the previously stocked fish. Adding more fish complicates the issue. Job one...stock it right. Job two...nurture, grow, fertilize, feed your babies. Nature allows the pond latitude to produce fish. Study fish production issues, learn how to produce. Job three...monitor growth rates. Catch and release bass this fall, observe bluegill growth rates, too. Job four...harvest properly, when the time comes. Your pond is like a garden. Bed prepared, seeds planted, fed, fertilized. Next, watch growth rates, and prepare to harvest fish, especially babies of your originally stocked fish, probably the third year.