We recently bought about 40 acres with two ponds on it. The previous owner's father died 20 years ago but she said that before that he worked the property in order to make it into a fish hatchery of some sort. He has several different dried out ponds on it. Anyways I just want the main pond to fish in and and have fun. It is about 1 acre give or take and I believe it is only about 5' feet deep. The lady said that Oklahoma came out and put 200 catfish in the pond about twenty years ago but the neighbor always sneaks on and steals her fish. I think this is true because my girlfriend and I fished the pond for about 8hrs and didnt catch a single catfish.
Our day we ended up with:
10 or so Blue Gill between 4-5"
10 or so Sun Fish between 4-5" only fished for the blue and suns for about 15mins
5 Large Mouth Bass between 10-12" All fished looked healthy but small.
I also saw a carp about 15lbs or so.
Anyways the water is kind of dirty. About 2 feet of visibility.
-I really want to get to where I have a bunch of crappie at least 10" of not bigger
- Some big catfish up to or around 10lbs
-And some nice size bass as big as possible
This seems like alot and I have no idea if this is even possible but I wanted to ask the experts on what they thought and how I could go about getting there. Im not sure how to post pictures but I am going to try! Thank you in Advance!
http://s63.photobucket.com/albums/h132/arizona3/?action=view¤t=DSCN0345.jpg
http://s63.photobucket.com/albums/h132/arizona3/?action=view¤t=DSCN0344.jpg
http://s63.photobucket.com/albums/h132/arizona3/?action=view¤t=DSCN0343.jpg
http://s63.photobucket.com/albums/h132/arizona3/?action=view¤t=DSCN0342.jpg
http://s63.photobucket.com/albums/h132/arizona3/?action=view¤t=DSCN0350.jpg

Hi Jon, welcome to pond boss. If you look at the archives under posting photos you will find that it is easy to imbed your photos directly in your post.

The pond looks great. We're glad you found Pond Boss!

Greetings and felicitations, Jon.

1. If Catifsh have not been resatocked for 20 years, an absence of them is no surprise. It is normally hard for cats to reproduce successfully in a pond with BG and bass present, and the original stockers would quite likely have died from old age, fishing injuries, etc.

2. If the water is a nice green or greenish-brown color, 2 feet of visibility is most likely a good thing in your pond. It would mean that the plankton which is the basis for 95% of your pond's food chain is active and at a desired density (18" to 24" visibility is considered optimal). OTOH if the pond is dirty because of suspended mud (brown to red in OK, I'm guessing) then carp (or other perhaps undesirable fish) are stirring up the bottom; usually not considered a good thing.

3. Crappie can be problematic in small ponds; they spawn before almost everyhting else, they frequently spawn erratically, and they compete with bass for food fish. Study the Crappie thread in the Archives for more info and think about whether Crappie are worth the possible (likely, IMHO) problems to you.

Try fishing with different baits/lure for different fish in the pond and find out what kinds and sizes of fish are in there. Your starting conditions will impact the route you would take to get to where you want the pond's fish populations to be.