Hello. I just found this site and I'm exited to pick up some tips and I'm sure I'll have a lot of questions. I am having a new pond built. It's about 120' by 60', 6 to 8 feet deep. I plan on stocking with LMB and BG. The pond place near me gets there stock fish in the spring. I'll probably wait until next spring to stock. I have quit a bit of landscape work to do and get the pond rolling with an airation set up.

For a change of pace consider yellow perch and smallmouth bass. FYI YP do not fair well when having to live with LMB in a weed free pond. Feed the YP hi-protein pellets and they will easily grow to 12"-14".

Interesting. I never considered SMB. Will they do as good as LMB?

Welcome PC Express! So great to see MI pond lovers join this forum.

There are many good Midwest pond owner experts on the forum that can help.

Tell us more about your pond. What soil? Is it a ground water pond? Do you know yet if water will come in or out through the bottom or sides? Do you have sources of water (creek or well?) to fill it as needed?

Do you have power or water supply at the pond?

Read the archives here. Your best bet is to spend a year learning about what your pond ends up like (size, water quality, leaks, etc) and meanwhile build your forage base. This is your only opportunity to let the smallest and most important parts of the pond grow without predation. Think about how you can source various minnows, shiners, crayfish, shrimp, scuds, etc. If you stock immediately the FHM could pull of a few spawns this year yet.

Then next spring you can plan the other fish. Many have done RES vs bluegill due to the benefits of the RES over bluegill in a smaller pond. However they can be harder to catch so if catching panfish is your goal then consider adding YP and using SMB as the apex predator.

Several here have had good success with a pond using predominately golden shiners and YP which somehow seem to keep each other balanced.

Post pictures along the way as the dirt starts moving!

Exciting times...

Thanks canyoncreek. My pond is holding water great so far. It is a ground water pond. I had a cattail type swamp dug out. Dirt is peat, some sand and clay. The excavator work is done and we're waiting for the spoils to dry up a little for the dozer work. And waiting for the operator to find time and motivation to get back to work . My goal is to have fish turtles and frogs. Fishing to manage. Bullfrogs were already there. I was originally thinking LMB, hybred bluegill, FHM. The pond place near me gets stock in the spring. It might be cool to get the minnows this year?

Porkchop - get the FHM's as soon as you can and put some breeding structure in for them like pallet stacks...



One cinder block is NOT enough for a two stack, don't ask how I learned that lesson and I'd use at least a block per pallet in the stack. My pallet stacks ended up being about one foot below the surface and some of the bottommost pallets in 3 to 4 foot of water. I put about 1000 FHM's in my 1/4 acre pond in April (2017) and by the end of the year I had so many that I was worried about bio mass capacity (unneeded concern obviously), but their ended up being massive amountsof those buggars for my stocked fish to forage upon. If you wait until you stock the fish, you will be mostly feeding the new minnows to the fish, given that your stockers will be big enough. Even at that, the fist spawn of minnows will be decimated rather quickly.

I would look into crawdads and PK shrimp (I think their is a northern version) if you can source them. Walking the creeks last year catching crawdads took me back to my youth...rubber boots, a bucket, and a net, it was like I was 10 again.

Skip the crawdads until you get some plants going. They like to chop plants to ribbons, and it is good to have *some* greenery in the pond to absorb excessive nutrients and provide cover.

I think my pics are to big to post. I'll have to figue that out. I'll have power there soon for an airation system. I'm thinking 2 diffusers. It's kind of a figure 8 design. I could use some more options for fish hatcheries. I'm thinking of some ideas for underwater habitats. I have some dead cedars I might try to use. Being that it's a new pond should i run my airators 24/7? What about crayfish? Next time I see some painted turtles on the road, I'll grab them. See if they'll hang around?

Liquid, right, wrong, or indifferent, I put crawdads in as soon as the pond filled (300 over the course of the summer). I had plenty of rip-rap along the dam, but no plant life. Now, my pond is very fertile. The secchi turbidity has ranged from 6 to 36 inches and averages about 24. It did not take one summer for the pond banks to mostly fill with plants. I suppose holding off on the crawdads would make a lot of sense if the pond was not very fertile. In that case getting plants established would be a priority. Otherwise, the crawdads could make plant growth difficult.

here's a thread of mine on my pond structure...

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=35082&Number=458150#Post458150

And the ultimate structure thread...

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92463#Post92463

Enjoy!

pics

just noticed a bunch of these snails floating around' What eats these?

In your area, pumpkinseed sunfish.

Yellow Perch will devastate snails. It took all of about 2 weeks after installing perch for my snail problem to go away.

As far as crawdads, you are right Quarter. My pond has/had very low fertility (super clear) and had taken a long time to get good plant growth and glad I didn't add them too early. I believe there is a point in the natural aging of a pond when there is a good time to add them if they don't come in on their own.

I am on year 7 now, and it may be time to put some in. I have an infestation of curly-leafed pond weed and now Bladder Wart. The BW is a native with nice yellow flowers, but my gosh that stuff can grow once the CLPW dies back in warm water. I hope the little crayfish can control some of the growth.

As a side story: I used to run a water line from a clogged farm tile halfway up our hill to a fountain at the bottom before the pond was eventually to be built to make these enormous ice castles in the winter. One spring after removing the fountain and just letting it run, I was trying to remedy a clog in the line, and it was a crayfish jammed in there! This is about 1000' from the nearest creek or pond. The best I can guess is during some really wet weather, it was trying to find some new habitat and this flowing pipe seemed like a good idea and climbed in and got stuck.

So at some point, they will find your pond if they travel in wet weather.

YP will not eat all species of snails. YP will best eat the common pond snail and not so much the other hard shell and larger snails.