Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Flatheads or Northerns?

I know that neither of this fish are recommended. Here is my situation. I have a pond that gets very little fishing attention due to it being completely stunted with gills and crappies. I have been thinning them in the past year, but am making no dent (dropped down the old aquaview down there).

This leaves me with the option of completely renovating, which would leave me with yet another balanced LMB/BG/CC pond, that I don't really need, OR a monster northern/flathead pond with plenty of forage fish (I know the bass will be forage as well, but that is irrelevant).

This pond is around an acre and a half, grass carp keep weeds to a minimum, 4-5 feet average depth, not much deeper than that, your average prarie pothole. I am in central Iowa, where the temperatures are as high as any in the summer, and usually pretty cold in the winter.

My question to you is which is going to better for catching monsters: flatheads, northerns, both, or heck wipers maybe? Give me your thoughts.

After a little more research, I think that a few Tiger Muskies would be another viable option, moreso than the pike due to the warm water.

Your goal in this 1.5 ac relatively small shallow pond seems to be as quoted- "a monster northern-musky/flathead pond with plenty of forage fish". My first question is- 1. How big, in your definition, is a monster fish? Second question is, 2. How many of these monster fish do you expect to raise in this 1.5 acres?

Since you seem to be bored with the traditional LMB/BG/CC pond, 3. how often do you expect to fish the "monster" pond and 4. what do you expect to catch each time that you fish it? i.e. average catch rate per hr of angling.

My expectations are not high. For a small Iowa farm pond monster is not meaning much. Heck, anything picture worthy would be worth it enough. I'm only talking like a handful of big predator fish for the entire pond. I have many other ponds that I could catch panfish and bass, this would be more of a pond that I would not harvest and would not try to catch these predators for a few years. That being said, I don't expect any catch per hour angling or expect any catch to come out of a trip to this pond.

The point of this pond would be to have a couple trophy fish with very high growth potential and virtually unlimited forage base (which is already established). The size of all other fish in the pond is irrelevant. I need to know under these circumstances which large predator is going to work best, and possibly a combination of a couple species, say a few Tiger Muskie and a few flatheads for example.

I would choose pike over anything because of their excellent catchability and the fact that they are the most fun of anything mentioned to catch. Pike will feed topwater and on plugs, spinners, or live bait under a bobber. They will hit a lure, miss and turn around to hit it again. I spend a couple days in Quebec each year solely going after pike, caught 79 in one morning, best day ever. Put the pike in and you will have great fun catching them. How many to put, is a question left to the experts, my opinion is based on what I would want to raise. Good luck.

Prey size does matter. A 4 lb. esox could do well on 3in. BG. However a big esox 15-20+ lbs needs bigger forage as well. It would expend to much energy chasing 2in. BG to do well. That is why big baits are used to catch big esox and the same applies to LMB and FC.

In basic numbers/lbs. how many predators can do well in a 1 acre pond? It depends but as a general measure in an average pond not highly fertile or managed , between 20 and 40 lbs. One medium FC and 1 medium esox. If you have LMB then don't expect much more. It takes sustained forage over years to grow a big LMB , FC or esox. You may have lots of forage now but add some of those and the forage may well disappear.

I would do tiger muskellunge.

They seem to do better stocked in small lakes and ponds than their fullblooded parents.

Tiger muskellunge are very difficult to find and purchase from private hatcheries. Does anyone know about a private hatchery that sells tiger muskellunge?

Most tiger musky are produced and stocked by state DNR's.

keystone hatcheries has muskey. i would call up Opel's Fish Hatchery
c/o Gary Opel
Box 51
Worden, IL 62097
618/459-3287

or pm Mike Robinson he runs keystone he might know. i personally would go with the pike as they seem to be able to live in shallower areas and on average are smaller therefore will be able to eat your forage base for longer. o ya a plus is that pickled pike is as good as pickled pickeral its some good stuff.

Ryan, I would go with a couple of pure strain musky, they are much more warm water tolerant than northerns or tiger musky.