Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Just restocked a farm pond and have questions.`

Hello all, stumbled across this site a few months ago and just finally joined. I'm amazed at the wealth of information here.

Some history.....I hunt on a farm that has a 3 acre pond/lake. It was stocked years ago with hybrid bluegill, channel cat, and large mouth bass but was overfished and neglected for quite some time....all before my time on the farm. We drained most of the pond a couple of years ago to redo the spillway. In the remaining water left, there only appeared to be a few small catfish and possibly some hybrid bluegill. It has about a 3' ledge about the perimeter and then drops to about 25' in the center. It's feed by rain runoff from the surrounding land and has since filled back up for some time now. There's vegetation growing around the banks, but I'm not sure what it is and quite frankly haven't done the research yet either. There's also some cattails growing in some areas as well. Because of the runoff, it tends to get muddy but generally clears up fairly quickly...usually with a visibility of 3-4'+ if I had to guess.

In an effort to have a place where I can fish and also introduce my 5 yr old son to fishing as well, I decided to stock the pond. After numerous talks with a fishery, I stocked the pond in May with 40 lbs of flathead minnows, 250 2-4" bluegill, 300 2-4" black crappie (which some would disagree with), and 225 4-6" channel cats. I plan on stocking about 225 large mouth bass in the fall as a predator to the crappie, etc.

I'm usually at the farm once every 2 weeks at the minimum, but try to get out there once a week if at all possible. Other than throwing out some catfish floating pellets when I'm out there, I don't feed otherwise. Realizing that the catfish pellets aren't the best, I'm currently looking to get some AquaMax 500 pellets.

So to my questions....other than the debate about the black crappie, do you see any faults to my stocking plan? I've read about papershell crawfish...would these be appropriate to stock as well? Should I feed on a more regular basis?

Overall goal of this fishery is to provide a fun place to fish with the hope of having some decent size crappie, catfish, etc. to eat as well.

Any info is appreciated and thanks for taking the time to read and respond.

Regards,
Kevin

Welcome to the forum!

Since you didn't specifically mention LMB and BG in your goals, then I have to ask. If you had a choice of catching large BG (10+")and many small (<14") LMB, or catching small (4"-6") BG and few large (5#+) LMB, what would you rather do?

Also, I would stock a LOT more BG (not hybrid BG). Usually BG are stocked at a rate of 20 to 30 for every LMB that you stock. Also, the CC, once they get over 18" will start eating the BG.

It would be more advantageous to you if you were to install a solar powered automatic feeder. That way the fish would be fed on a regular schedule, and grow quicker.

I would start a fishing log and keep track of all the fish size/length caught and keep track of what was kept. I would restock the next year the #'s of CC that you took out the previous year.

As for the Papershells, with the CC and soon to be LMB in there, if they don't have a lot of cover to hide in (rocks, small dia PVC pipes, dense brush piles, etc. then I think the Papershells will be cleaned out in a short amount of time.

Thanks for the reply.

To your first question regarding BG and LMB, I'd lean towards the 4-6" BG and some 5lb LMB, keeping in mind my prefernce for some nice sized black crappie to eat.

One thing that I failed to mention was that I will be adding artificial structures around the pond over the next couple of months. This will provide structure for any fry, smaller fish, minnows, etc. Not sure if this will help with the papershells. I'm just looking for additonal forage fish besides the flatheads.

Look into stocking Golden Shiners for an additional forage species. The flatheads fatheads (FHM) are there for just the first year, maybe 2 after you stock your apex predators. I would also make about 20% of your panfish stocking Redear Sunfish (RES). They eat snails, and snails are a vector for some fish parasites. Stocking them is like preventative medicine.

If you want larger LMB, then only stock 50 per surface acre.

You might have to keep a close eye on the growth of the LMB, and the growth of the crappie. That's where keeping records of what is caught comes in handy. If the crappie growth starts to slow down, then you should concentrate on removing a bunch of them. With the Crappie in there, I don't know how it'll affect the growth rates of the smaller LMB. Both the crappie and smaller LMB will be competing for the same food.....

In regards to LMB, you can carry about 75-100 pounds per surface acre of LMB of all sizes, so the quantity of 5# LMB might be limited. If you fish a lot for them, they might get hook shy, and will probably be very difficult to catch on artificials.

Check out this thread on how one member is using a fyke net in combination with crappie. As you are placing habitat around the pond, you might want to consider leaving or preparing an area in the water to do the same as him.

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=338626&page=1

Wouldn't adding structure aid in crappie stunting? Just curious?

Thanks for the info and advice esshup.

Based on my current stock levels mentioned in my first post, how many RES would you recommend to throw in?

Triple check to see if there are any LMB in your pond. If there are, the RES have to be stocked at a size that is at least 1/3 as long as the LMB or you might loose a lot to predation.

I'd stock 900 of them, and look at your BG population. If it's very low or non-esistant, then I'd also stock 4500 to 9000 BG.

Thanks.

I just stocked 250 BG. 4500 to 9000 more BG seems like an insane amount of fish to stock. These numbers are way higher than anything I've read or been previously told.

Scott will be able to tell you correctly, but till then...

You said you want Large LMB. I think the higher numbers reflect the amount LMB can and will eat. I am also assuming that this recommendation is based on your location where the LMB will feed longer than in northern ponds.

Also, lots of BG, even if they are small in size from being overpopulated, will still be a blast for younger kids to catch.

Scott didn't mention the size of these. I would think he is talking the smallest sized stockers. I would think as the stockers increase in size, numbers would probably drop.

Correct. Not really knowing the size of the remaining fish that are in the pond, that number that I gave was for stocking fingerling fish.

A LMB needs to eat 10# of fish to gain 1# in weight. Greg Grimes has had some phenominal success in getting LMB to grow very quickly when stocking ratios were 20-30:1

If your goals were different, then I would have recommended a different stocking plan.

You have to balance the carrying capacity of the pond (per surface acre) against your goals. If you had said that you wanted to catch 10" BG and 2#-3# LMB, then the BG numbers would have dropped and the LMB numbers increased. For your goals you want to have a LOT of forage for the LMB, and with the crappie in there, they will be eating a lot of YOY forage that the smaller LMB would be eating. So, because of the crappie you have to have extra forage. You cannot count on Crappie to spawn with enough regularity (year to year) to continually provide enough forage for your LMB to grow to their potential. The BG have to take up that slack. The YOY crappie will be eating the YOY BG that the YOY LMB would be feeding on.

Makes perfect sense now, thank you. I'm pretty new to this all so I'm still trying to figure it all out.

For comparison sake, if I wanted a balanced pond of BG, BCP, CC, LMB and RES, what levels would I need?

To me, the wild card in the mix is the BCP. I don't have any first hand knowledge of stocking a pond with a BCP mix.

If you want balance, consider 800 BG, 200 RES, 40-50 LMB (skip the CC especially in the beginning or in total) per acre and leave out the crappie.

Crappie and small LMB will compete for food. Crappie breed earlier and in greater numbers. You will get great bass out of your initial stock #s but will likely be unhappy with your numbers in 4-5 years when the initial stocked LMB are gone. Or you can try uber stocking forage: Shad, Golden Shiners, BG and see how it goes.

CC: most say skip due to extra fish capacity on ponds and the hook shyness after they have been caught. You could let your pond get balanced and then consider a small number per acre to add if you decide to do it.

You need actual info when stocking into an existing fishery. Numbers and sizes vary widely depending on the situation (facts). Goals for the fishery need to be clear and possible for that system. Habituation is key if adult predators are thee.

In all the reading I've done here, "balanced pond" and BCP are never uttered in the same sentence. They're going to need a lot of monitoring and management.