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

I want to know how many yellow perch/SMB/Channel cats to stock in my 3/4 acre new pond this fall?Do I need BG?

I wouldn't put BG in the pond with that mix. What are your goals for the pond?

Grant, I'm building a 3/4 acre YP/SMB pond as well. SMB are not able to keep a BG population in check like LMB can, so it is generally not advised to stock them together. RES (redear sunfish) is a sunfish option to stock since they will not overpopulate. I was advised NOT to stock CC with this mix, but I can't find the thread now, so hopefully someone will pop in and elaborate on this.

Omaha, ? many did you stock in your pond "YP/SMB"
Essup-my goal for my pond is to be able to catch hard fighting fish.Do you know if I can stock CC?

Still digging my pond. But I'll get some guys who have YP/SMB ponds to check out your thread and help you out.

Grant, sure you can stock CC, but I hope you are a better fisherman than I am. I'm having a heck of a time catching the 100+ that are in my pond. I stocked 100 6"-9" CC in May of last year and they are 18" now. There are some in there that are 5 pounds or so, and I know of 4 that are at least 15# as well. Those are probably 5-6 years old.

If you want to catch a hard fighting fish, stock HSB, with FHM and GSH as forage, plus pellet feed them Aquamax 500/600 on a consistent basis and they'll grow quick. Stock 50 to 100/acre.

I put a large number of smallmouth bass fingerlings in my .62 acre pond las fall (200) but I will sell as many as I can when they reach about 3 lbs. (Live fish for a show tanks at a large retailer). Also in order to ship them of out the state I need to sacrifice 60 for VHS healthy testing. The pond has only female yellow perch and male only bluegill in it. Keep in mind all of these fish are fed pellets daily including the smallmouth bass.

If I was to stock a recreational pond with smallmouth bass fingerlings I'd go with 100 per acre along with both sexes of yellow perch. If you want a good smallmouth pond do not stock largemouths. After a few years you will have about 50 adult smallies in the pond.

Grant

Is your pond dug or is this a future project? How immediate is your need for direction?

Cecil-do you want to sell any of these fish this fall?If not where can I buy yellow perch?How big does YP get in 3/4 acre pond
Teehjae57-Pond will be dug in 1 month-but I have existing pond as well that is 4 yrs. old w/ BG/LMB/CC
Do you think I can trap the cc in my existing pond & transfer?

Cecil - post a picture of some of your YP that you've grown in your small ponds.

Grant - keep in mind that a 5 lb CC can eat as many fish per year as a 5 lb LMB, sometimes more since the CC could be growing faster than the LMB. We had a local 1/3 ac YP pond with only YP and 6 CC. CC were keeping YP in balance due to predation. CC can be efficient predators espically on YP since they rest at dark on the bottom. The pond owner had a very hard time getting the big (30"+) CC out since they were eating too many 6"-8" YP. He had to resort to shooting the CC.

Generally speaking the fewer SMB you put in the pond the faster they will grow "to a point". 100 smb per acre is on the high side and if most survive, IMO they should be reduced to 50-60 per ac or fewer if you want them to grow to trophy size - 18"-19"+. Remember as those 50 bass get to 16" there will also be numerous smaller bass present due to recruitment.

If you want trophy YP in a pond with SMB (or other predators) then IMO you should use pellet trained YP. In a pond with SMB it will be difficult to grow numerous jumbo YP due to the competition factor for preyfish from the other predators such as SMB-CC-WE and maybe HSB. SMB & CC are more aggressive fish predators than YP. Without pellet feeding the YP are likely to not get enought natural foods to grow optimally to large sizes of 12"-14". Done correctly (pellet feeding) and in a pond as small as 1/3 ac, one can grow numerous YP (10"-14") that allows for an annual harvest of 25-40 YP (75-120/ac). However this scenario does not allow the presence of 60-125/ac larger predators (10"-16") each eating 125-200 small YP per year. Do the math; minimally that is around 7500 small fish and this does not include YP eating fish. That is a lot of YP to be loosing per year to predation and them being unavailable to move into the harvest size range of 8"-14" YP. A supplimental forage fish should probably be present to sustain the prey base. For a sizable harvest per year there has to be ample numbers in the smaller size classes of well fed rapidly growing fish to "fill the ranks" of harvested fish.

What can you tell me about HSB?I realy want a pond that has good fighting fish that will be well balanced w/ min. $ on feeding.This pond is my weekend home & i am not there during the week.Got any suggestions????

There is tons of info here on HSB...

Thread..How about a HSB/GSH pond?

Thread HSB Growth rates.

Thread HSB Stocking Questions

I could go on and on but I won't (unless I can figure a way to fit a joke in here somehow).

IMHO one of the fastest and easiest ways to search this forum is to go to Google and type in what you want to search for followed by the phrase site:pondboss.com.

For example to find the links above I went to Google and typed in this exact phrase:

hsb site:pondboss.com

make sure you have the space between the search word and the phrase site:pondboss.com

Doing that I quite literally came up with 40 pages of Google references just here on Pond Boss.

Pretty cool right?!

Good tip JHAP!! I'll try that next time I'm searching. Actually I'm always searching for something. Usually it's something I lost though!

Thanks Cisco, someone here taught me that. I'd give them credit but I can't remember who it was, I remember the tip but not the tipper. Funny how the mind works.

Can smallmouths grow well in Oklahoma?

What kind of water would I need in a pond to stock YP or Walleye?