Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Building a dam New pond construction- Wisconsin

About four feet from full pool, with the larger surface area, I am only gaining about 3" a day now. The dock is complete, the walk bridge over one of the fingers is almost done. Seeing minnow fry, most likely from the fathead minnows.

Most of my cover is now under water.

Now for a couple of stocking questions. I have fathead minnows stocked since May. I stocked the rest of the forage a month ago. Is there anything wrong with stocking HBG this fall?

I assume I should wait on the SMB, WE, and YP until next spring, correct? If these were stocked in the 2-3" range, and I stocked an additional 100 pounds of forage at the same time this fall, could I go ahead with fall stocking? Sorry for the multiple questions, and thanks again in advance.

Either or would work. It might be better stocking everything in the Fall due to limited availability in the Spring.

If you wait, just be sure that the fish stocked in the Spring are bigger than the HBG can eat (well, not the FHM )

Additional 100 pounds of forage in 3 acres?

What #/lbs of forage have you already stocked?

What will your entire stocking plan be?

Sorry if this has already been posted.

The initial stocking of forage was light, maybe a pound of FHM, 50 bluntnose minnows, 50 johnny darters, and 50 spotfin shiners, 150 papershell crayfish.

The stocking plan is for 50 WE, 100 SMB, 200 YP, and 500 HBG. I have been kicking around a supplemental fall/ winter fishery of 100-150 RBT.

The additional forage would be 80# FHM, and 20#GSH. Can you go overboard on the forage?? Other than the cash outlay is this a bad idea? I figured since I might be cutting the time short between forage introduction and stocking, I could artificially augment this with a very heavy forage stocking at time of the predator introduction.

The pond is aerated, has average depth of about 8-10 feet (deepest of around 20), and will be feeding Silver Cup via Texas Hunter feeder. Thanks for any input.

Heres a recent pic of the pond at full pool. The walkway needs to be finished to the dock yet but otherwise we are about done.

http://i1055.photobucket.com/albums/s518/mpandrews/IMG_20130413_175210_879_zpsaa76b25d.jpg

You have a beautiful place. I think 80 lbs. of fatheads in 3 acres would be like Mrs. Parton daughter wearing a padded bra. You don't need that much.

Yeah I know that was overkill especially since there was an existing population but since I opted for a winter RBT fishery, and I am aerated to prevent a DO drop from too much biomass, I got carried away.