Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking oh no...largemouth

I'm going to have to agree with poppy65 also. I'm not even done digging my pond and I am seeing minnows and some fish hitting the surface in the evenings. The only stuff that has been close to my pond was excavation equipment, 2 mallard ducks that have taken up residence from time to time and a blue heron. I see the ducks and heron fly to a neighboring pond about 400 yards away from time to time. I haven't put the first fish in since I didn't want to stock it before the whole pond was finished.

I have better odds of winning the lottery than fish eggs surviving a 400 yard trip on the legs of any bird. I think you will find that during high water events, heavy rain etc, your body of water connects to another body of water.

As simplistic as this sounds, if a squirrel can store a nut in a tree for the winter, a heron can put a fish in a body of water for future usage. That's just my thoughts.

We haven't been able to reach any consensus on this.

Overton, who essentially lives on many, many ponds, has seen herons drop fish in his ponds, more than once. Sure, the heron might have just accidentally dropped a fish, and in a high feeding area, the odds go up for the accidental drop. But, the more you are on a body of water, the more you see.

We've all seen herons eat their fish as they catch them also. I wonder how much they transport fish to their roosts to eat.

I'm with Sunil on this. I don't buy the fish eggs theory, but I'm open to the possibility of a Heron, or raptor of some sort accidentally dropping an entire fish.

And if it managed to drop two........