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

Has anyone here stocked walleye? Why is it that there are not often mentioned as fish to stock in a lake.

Best eating fresh water fish out there!!!!!!!!

Walleyes are more of an open water fish that do better in very large resevoirs. One could stock them in a small lake or pond but they probably won't reproduce well and you would probably have to restock them periodically.

masterbasser

See this link about growing walleye in smaller waters -
http://www.pondboss.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=5;t=000257#000000

Three good articles have appeared in Pond Boss magazine about raising walleye in ponds and smaller lakes. See:

September - October 2005. Why Walleye? by M. Cornwell

January - February 2005. Walleyes In Northern Ponds. by Dr D. Willis

March - April 2003. Walleye In A Small Pond Present a Major Challenge. by B. Cody

I have had good luck with LMB/Walleye with a minnow, crawfish, and bluegill/pumpkinseed forage base. (Pond is quite fertile)
In particular my walleye appear to have spawned last year after being stocked in November of 2002 at a length of 2-4".
The young of the originally stocked walleye are now at 5-7" with the adults 16-18".
Points of interest:
Pond is 1 1/2 acres, 8' deep max with an average of about 3'
Sees 18" plus of ice over winter but is constantly aerated at this time.
During the spring spawning time I pump a constant supply of water in from a drainage ditch. This might be part of the spawning success key. (The walleye gather in this area of inflow)
Rocky bottom for 50%

All to say I have had success with walleye and am happy with my decision to stock them.

Pottsy,

We used to go fishing for walleye at night in Lake Hopatcong. If you havent tryed them at night...you should. Top water mostly spooks or popR's or a floating rapala. They were a experiment in a few lakes in NJ and they just boomed into a great fishery. Only problem is we would be fishing a tourny and think we had a lunker LMB and it was a walleye...

Hey Joey, top-water is one way I have never caught a walleye, that would be interesting indeed.

Oh ya.. sneek down there late night after 12 in the late spring threw summer, not sure about fall and throw what I said and you will be in for a big surprize. Walleye are nocturnal.

Pottsy you put a smile on my face, there is some hope. How about sauger or saugeye. Are either one of these a better choice, and will they reproduce in a small pond?

jg74 - I have no experience with sauger or saugeye or other combinations therein so I couldn't speak to their viability in small ponds. Walleye, even if a put-take proposition, work pretty well as far as I am concerned and seem to have quite good survivability. (Particularily good for the dinner plate.)

jg74 & those interested - Many pondowners are "hung up" on wanting walleye to spawn in ponds. I think that ideally you do NOT want walleye to spawn in the small pond. Spawning walleye could easily create a situation where you run out of enough forage fish to maintain good growth for the up-and-coming youger walleye and the remaining adults. A pond with a sizable number of walleye per acre takes a lot of the PROPER type and SIZE distribution of forage fish. Walleye do not feed very well on sunfish types. Walleye are naturally adapted to prey on slender bodied preyfish. Having to utilize other types of fish and having to eat improper sizes of forage fish for food lowers their growth rates. With no walleye reproduction in a small pond you have much better control of the numbers of predators. GOOD FISH MANAGEMENT IS ALL ABOUT CONTROL. Knowing with a fair accuracy how many predators are in the pond, will make it easier to maintain proper forage fish densities to continuously produce optimum growth of the existing predators. Young walleye are not that expensive so one can restock the predators as they are needed based on current mortality rates (natural and harvest).

Postscript. Walleye, sauger, and their hybrid saugeye are all capable of producing viable spawn in the pond setting. Many think that since saugeye are a hybrid they will not produce offspring. Several studies have shown that saugeye spawn naturally and the young survive. I have saugeye in my pond. Desipte what is said in the fishing articles, I find them hard to catch in my pond situation where forage is ample. Saugers and Saugeye are raised at only the VERY rare hatchery if at all in the US and thus both types of fish as fingerlings or juveniles are very difficult to locate.

As far as spawning goes I just like the idea that after I purchase some fish there will be more freebies to come from that purchase. Even if they are eaten by other fish and dont get to grow out. Sounds simple enough. I know its more complicated than that though.
Can anyone recommend a good hatchery for walleye, sauger, saugeye, and yellow perch south of Indianapolis,IN? I would like to add a small amount of YP and one of the others on the list to my pond.

We have walleyes and a couple sauger in our 4-acre lake. Around here, every one is walleye crazy so having them be able to catch a walleye is a big deal.

Our walleyes aren't very competitive for forage with the LMB and CC. Consequently, they are very thin with very low relative weights. These low relative weights occur most in the summer and they gain weight as the water gets cooler and the LMB slow down. Our walleye have to be at least 15 inches to be competitive for forage.

In NJ the walleye eat herring, mostly at night. They hit during the day but night they gorge on herring. The fish are fat heathy fish. Maybe you can think of adding thredfin? There similar to herring (alewife). might work for you. I am new and its just a idea, ask these guys here if it might be a good idea for your situation.

jg74 - Slow down. Do a little search of past posts here regarding using walleye in ponds unless your wallet is fat and then add fish as you wish. As far as WE, saugeye and sager spawning in small ponds, just cause you like the idea, I would not count on it happening. Many before you have tried and their success has been pretty low or nonexistant. Extra special conditions can get some WE spawn to survive to fingerling stage. But fingerlings living beyond that point is very rare when LMB are present.

There will be two main items and several other factors to overcome when adding these fish to an existing LMB fishery. One is the predator factor and the other is forage fish factor. I will not discuss habitat type and only briefly touch on predators - competition and proper forage items.

Predator Factor.
From my experiences with YP, saugeye and walleye in ponds, they do not do "well" or thrive as added stockings to small ponds (less than 2 ac) that have an existing and established LMB population. Norm's post above alludes to this fact. Stocking even bigger fish increases survival rates. As Norm says just because they are surviving does not mean they will be in good body condition which reduces their benefit as a table fare.

Forage Fish Factor.
Walleye (WE), sauger, saugeye and YP are adapted to feeding on narrow bodied fish and NOT sunfish types. Unless WE have an untapped food source in your pond they will struggle to survive. They will eat sunfishes but they are not preferred food and sunfishes are not efficient as food conversion items. These predator types will grow slower on a diet of primarily sunfishes compared to soft rayed, narrow fish. Dr Willis has published papers on this topic. LMB feed well on sunfishes. Two quite different types of predators. If both have to utilize the same food items the LMB will win almost every time. If for no other reason just shear numbers to compete against. I could go on and on about these topics, but you should get the general idea.

If you introduce WE, sauger, saugeye or YP to a LMB pond you should add fish that are preferrably 10"-12",(YP=9"-10"). Take a look at a 10"or 12" WE. It is not very big around in cross section. A 16" LMB can very easily eat a 10"-12" WE and it does not care if the tail sticks its mouth for a day or so . WE of vulnerable sizes are easy prey for LMB since each is active at different daylight periods. YP are also easy prey due to their staying in the narrow body shape for numerous years until they get to around 9" long. Even at 9", this YP doen not have much chance against an aggressive 15"-16" LMB. Several years is long time to exist in a small pond without getting ate by numerous big mouthed aggressive co-predators. The numbers of add stock that survive will be related to how much weed growth is in the water body - more weeds equals better survival. Larger ponds often have slightly more complex habitats which can give WE and similar types a slightly better overall survival advantage than those in smaller ponds.

If you add WE I suggest that you remove 2 or better yet 3 LMB for each WE added. This will free up forage fish so WE can better compete against remaining LMB. While WE are in the pond keep the LMB at a lower density by occassional thinning so the WE can have more forage opportunities. Adjust populations accordingly.

As I said earlier, Sauger and saugeye are very difficult to find in hatcheries. You will not fully realize this until you do some extensive searching. I doubt that you can locate any hatchery in the US for sauger or saugeye. These larger fish have to be obtained from the wild. However about 5%-10% of the northern US hatcheries regularily carry WE and about 25%-30% carry YP although finding the proper larger sizes can sometimes be more difficult depending on location. Check your local hatcheries for which fish they carry. Depending on size of pond one is usually not talking about very many add stock fish per acre - usu 3-5 and YP can be added at a somewhat higher density. If you add YP I also recommend that you remove a LMB of equal size for each 3-4 perch added.

If you add any of these fish please come back and tell us about your experiences. Good Luck.

Bill's comments really mirror our experience. We had many yellow perch initially and I haven't seen one in the last couple of years. I should have added that it seems like a walleye must be 14-15 inches just to survive predation. I caught an 18-inch walleye this fall and even it was skinny. Again, keep in mind that most people want walleyes to eat. We don't, we just want to give people an opportunity to say that they caught a walleye so it is worth our time to keep adding 15-inch walleyes.

If we can feed train yellow perch, we should be able to do the same with walleyes. Has anyone tried it?

I have thought of adding yellow perch every winter, just because they spawn very early and would provide very early forage. We also have white suchers which spawn but I think these young get eaten by everything else very quickly.

I put 6-8 WE in my first pond. None was bigger than 2 lbs and maybe 15 inches...nice and fat lake fish. Just want to be able to say I "might" catch one through the ice sometime.

BTW...one was floating this spring. She was about 18" and 3-3.5 lbs after 2 years. Good growth, but there's lots of small bass (were, anyway) CC and BG for them to gorge on. That was a sad day in the Clark household

Matt I read here sometimes they have trouble passing their eggs add it may kill them. Thats ashame she never saw the frying pan.

Matt -- The fish could also have been an old male and died of old age. Often the males do not get much bigger than that size - depending. Numerous reasons or a combination of things could have caused the death.

We have used walleye as a non-reproducing predator in some YPerch ponds in my area. In mid-Oct we removed 3 of 10 walleye from a 0.33 acre pond that is primarily a Yperch pond. I have copied my post here from another thread since it also dealt with walleye in small ponds.

Firstly, understand this is a mature YP fishery in a small pond. Secondly note that I do not necessarily agree with this harvest philosophy. The owner, similar to some others, in my area almost always lose some of the largest and oldest YP during the hottest periods of the summer - depending on weather. Often this number can be as high as 20-30 individuals and always the biggest ones, depending on the situation. This particular owner just HATES to discard these prime fish as waste, due to heat related deaths. His main philosphy was to harvest a significant number of the largest perch and then let the younger perch fill the void. This is a very common and usually the standard philosophy in fish management.

The owner thinks he has a real good number of smaller perch avalable to fill the void. I am not positive of this theory based on the number or percentage of small YP that we caught while fishing. Note that we also harvested 3 walleye (WE) 16"-21" along with the 30 large YP. These three WE were under standard weight, but not noticably thin. Largest ones (20",21" females with small egg sacs- Oct) were an ounce or two above 2 lbs. Smallest one at 16" was a male. In 1999, there were originally 10 walleye (8")originally placed in this in this 0.33 ac pond. Growth rate has slower than the optimum despite ample forage of YOY perch and bluntnose minnows. I suspect the numbers of small YP are "down" in this pond due to predation factors from the walleye and large number of YP. Removing the WE and larger YP should help increase the numbers of small YP and minnows. The owner and I discussed the ramifications of removing these larger fish which could help or hinder small fish recruitment. We will keep an eye on the impacts of the fish harvest.

Note - I have been actively helping the owner manage this small pond since its inception in 1994. It is one of the first exclusive YP ponds that we produced in NW Ohio. As far as I know and besides mine, it is one of the very best YP fisheries in the whole region. Those 30 YP and 3 WE were caught in 90 minutes which included monkeying around with regular fishing duties and getting nets, photos, rebaiting, retying hooks, etc. I may put a profile of this pond on my list of articles for Pboss Mag. I have numerous photos of its history.

The pond owner prefers a fall harvest instead of a harvest when eggs masses are large (winter) or for a lengthy period after the spawn (Apr-Jun) when there seems to be less harvestable meat biomass per fish. Summer harvest of YP can result in off flavors &-or softer textured fillets.