Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Advice on possibilities for pond stocking

My first post, so dont laugh if this is ridiculous. I'll be moving onto a property with a 3.5 acre pond in the spring. Based on personally fishing, the pond has plenty of LMB, BG and reportedly crappies, although I have not personally caught any of the latter. It has not been stocked for years. I plan to add more cover, waterlilys, iris, etc., but there are existing low growing mats of green weed(sorry, no ID yet) in the shallows at present. Depth from a few feet to about 15, but detailed bottom contour an unknown at this point. I want to recreate something from my childhood, i.e. a Wisconsin type lake. I know walleye, northern pike and musky are probably out based on my location, but we have native pickerel in North Carolina and Yellow Perch are in some of our reservoirs. In summary, I would only have to add the Pickerel and YP to the existing bass and bg populations to get it close enough. Any hope of this working? I think the key is probably providing enough cover for the perch and forage fish, with the two big predators(based on the great stuff I've read on the forum). I've thought of excluding the largest fish from an inflow arm of the pond with chicken wire to give some protection to the forage. Anyone think this might work? Thanks in advance for any help!

Excluders work in bee hives but not so well in ponds. The problem is all fish start small before they grow into big fish.
The young predators that get caught behind the excluder will be like the fox in the hen house.
So far as adding native pickeral & yellow perch I'm sure it can be done but will require much more management than a LMB/BG pond. The more predators you add the more complicated & intense the management becomes. If you think it's worth the trouble then by all means have the pond you want!

You should not need the chicken wire fencing with the presence of "existing low growing mats of green weed". The existing weed, providing it has some adequate height (20"- 40") off the bottom, should provide adequate refuge areas for smaller fish. I think your best chance for success is if you begin with only a few pickeral per acre (2-4). This assumes you will be using chain pickeral and not grass or redfin pickeral. I think it is a bad idea to stock grass or redfin pickeral into a pond.

I do not have a lot experience with chain pickeral in ponds but I think the chance of their successfully spawning in a pond is quite low.

I think pickeral will eat a fair amount of your LMB fingerlings and the more pickeral you add to your pond the more you will find that more and more of the numbers of small bass will decline proportionally. Unless your pond is fairly weedy it may be pretty hard getting yellow perch established to the point of having a viable breeding population that includes harvestable sized yellow perch. 16"-18" bass and 28"+ pickeral will both prey heavily on both perch and young bass up to 9" long.

I am not sure of the best way to begin stocking to achieve your goal. I can think of advantages and disadvantges to the several stocking options that come to mind. Unless someone has experince with this concept you will have to experiment on your own. Your initial stocking density and initial sizes of these two new fish for your pond has a lot to do with the relaive condition of the existing bass & bgill populations.

Good points. I'm not planning on intensively managing the pond for fish production, would just like some perch to eat occasionally and a few good size bass and or pickerel to catch and release occasionally. If the pickerel dont spawn, that simplifies the issue of overpredation from them, since I could control their impact with number stocked. Does anyone know of a good reference for aquatic plants which might provide the necessary cover for the perch? A concern of course is not to introduce a noxious weed. I gather from other posts that some of you are professionals. Anyone know of a good basic college level introduction to pond ecology, predator/prey relations, etc. I'm well versed in math and general biology, chemistry,etc. Also, what is the problem with redfin or grass pickerel?

Firstly get a good identification of your "low growing mats of green weed". this will then indicate if you need something else in the pond.
A good local place for you to start for plant suppliers is Perry's Water Gardens in Franklin NC.

2. If you don't have the Pond Boss booklet titled "Basic Pond Management" then begin with it.

3. Redfin and grass pickeral grow to only 13" and 15" respectively. This character of small maximum size is not large enough to jusify loss of lots of forage fish to these small toothy critters.