Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose golden shiners

I went fishing today and caught a 6" golden shiner. I was wondering what disadvantages there might be in having them in my pond. My pond is 1 acre 9 ft average depth and has plenty of predator fish ( I think ). I have 50 large mouth bass and 25 channels for predators. I have 80 / 20 mix of redear and bluegill at 400 count. I also have some crappie in which I fish heavily for to try to keep numbers down. I stocked 5 lbs fathead minnows for additional forage before I knew the shiners were in there. The shiners take feed at one end of the pond and the gills take feed at the other end of the pond. I knew they were here but it didnt really sink in until I caught one while flyfishing today.

The only problem is they might be too big for your LMB to eat if it is a new pond. If you weren’t feeding they might out compete your BG.

If you are interested in growing big bass, I think Gshiners are great forage. They occupy a different niche than sunfish and help diversify the food chain for your LMB. Being slender compared to BG or RES, they go down easier, too.

If you are trying for large BG/RES (like me) you may resent the GShiners taking up part of the biomass, but under the bass-crowding usually used in a sunfish-emphasis pond, the Shiners will diminish in relative numbers (due to lower reproduction and easier swallowability) fairly quickly (couple of years??? I am figuring the time frame out myself.).

Aaron, depending on what you want, it sounds like you have a good mix to support multiple predators. The Shiners will help you in trimming down the Crappie, GS have the reputation of raiding nests during the spawn, just like Crappie have the reputation of raiding the young of year because they hatch first. If you like Crappie, by all means keep the adult shiners in there to support the balance. The GS will raid all nests so there is a price to pay considering your Bass population. I welcome GS to my pond, they were well established with the bgill before CC, LMB, HSB, Tilapia, and Crappie went into my pond this Spring. So far everything looks good..I expect everything to complicate itself in the near future. If Tilapia are legal in your area, I highly suggest getting an aquarium and starting a few up, they are miracle workers for forage and clean up a lot of mess.