Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Good Trophy Bass Stocking?

Hello,
My name is Brett and im planning onstarting a trophy bass pond anywhere from 10 to 30 acres. Here are my stocking ideas for such a pond. I will be fertilizing,aerating and if needed liming this pond.
Largemouth Bass Florida Strain
Bluegill
Black Crappie
Golden Shiners
Threadfin Shad
Fathead Minnows
Gambusa Minnows
Crawfish

I am going to add palets and rocks and other structure/plants for the smaller fish to hide and reproduce and leave ample room for the threadfin and golden shiners to do their open water swimming. Please coment im a firsttime pond builder and want a trophy bass pond.

Wow sounds like you off to a great start. With that much water you should have high hopes. This website offers a book "Raising Trophy Bass" by Bob Lusk, I own it for the same purpose. I have a 5 acre trophy bass pond and will soon stock my bass.

I would define a trophy bass pond as a pond as a pond with multiple 10 lb bass in it. You definition may be different.

You sound like you are ready to do everything you can to make it happen.

If you really want trophy bass I think most would advise against the Crappie, however if you do get 30 acres of water, there may be room to have them.

You are in Georgia, if you need someone to buy fish from I would reccomend Greg Grimes, he would be able to guide you to your goal. If you dont already have someone in mind.

I would also reccomend you look up threads of previous trophy bass ponds, and how they were done. You have great ideas for structure and we also have a thread with those ideas.

Tell us more about your goals for it, good fishing for BG and Crappie and multiple 6lb bass? or less catches/hr but bigger fish such as 8-10lbs.

Good luck keep us informed and tell us more about what you want.

this thread has many ideas for structure such as what you already have.

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92463#Post92463

this is a thread of the building of my own personal TBP and as you read you will see how my plans changed and for what reasons. there are many other TBP threads with useful info.

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=11637&Number=129716#Post129716

the last thing I have to add is you already plan for Fla bass, so I assume you know they do see to grow the largest, but also many consider them harder to catch, almost imposible unless you use live bait. Just something to consider if you have not already. I am considering F1's and Fla so that way if I cant catch the Fla maybe I can catch a big F1

Your project excites me! in 5 years if im in Georgia for some reason dont be supprised if I come over to go fishing!

thank you for the info on Greg i just checked his site and looks liek i changed where im getting my help from. I have been looking around for around 1yr on how to maintain a proper bass pond and after some research in reading and out on the lakes i found that a pond or lake with crappie had less bass but larger sizes. EX1. Uncles pond, has similar to what im stocking, he got an 11lber outa there. Local pond, got a 10lber and so far only has bluegill, shellcracker and other sunnies of the sort and black crappie. But yes i know how crappie can be and am second guessing their presence in my pond. But what i feel their doing is slight competition with bass meaning less bass but larger and they add some food for bass but thats mainly shiners, minnows, craws,bluegill.

I am no pro when it comes to what im about to say, but that wont stop me

From what I have read here on the forum one reason for the smaller number but larger bass is because crappie spawn early and yoy bass and yoy crappie comepete with each other but he crappie have a leg up. However the bass that are adults have alot of crappie to eat and pick from.

There are many more factors when dealing with crappie and I will let one of the experts help you there. But read some of the crappie threads on the site and it may help your decision.

yes after reading gregs site im thinking on removing crappie from the list but now i should get a secondary predator right? I was thinking rock bass or warmouth how would they do?

IMHO if you want Trophy bass I would only have Largemouth Bass. BG are predators limited only by mouth size.

Rock bass and warmouth would be competing with bass of some size, and thus slowing their growth. One day your orgional stockers will die and you need the next crop of fish healthy and ready to take their place as the biggest bass in the pond.

By tomorrow others will weigh in and we will see what they have to say.

One last thing, in my pond im stocking above the standard 10 BG to one Bass, I will up the number to somewhere around 32:1 this is said to help bass grow fast.

But the beauty of it is, its your pond and in the end you can add whatever you want!

thanks for all the help. Im going to go with
Largmouth Bass Florida Strain
Bluegill
Golden Shiners
Threadfin Shad
Fathead Minnows
Craws
May add other smaller minnow species in the 5" to 1" range for smaller fish to eat but this will be the main setup for now. Now i need to:
1. Find land
2. Find proper soil/drainage/water supply
3. Think of a layout
4. Create Cover
5. Lime
6. Add plants
7. fertilize
8. Add fish
Thats it right? or is the order at least right off a ballpark?

Yep thats very close to how mine is going.

Yes you are on the right track, your local NRCS can help you with one and two. Get a soil test to see if you even need the lime, adding plants in not always needed or wanted so be careful there, I would see what grows naturally first.

Make sure whoever digs the pond knows what you have in mind, such as you may want an island or humps and dips, or sharp dropoff, all serve their purpose.

I dont know much about the fertilizer so I would read some old threads and see what the experts have to say.

all in all you seem to have it under control

yes im adding few plants but researching the ones im adding immensly. Also having Greg dig out the pond even though his prices are high its worth it in the beginning. And yes i hope the soil wont need liming or aeration because that will rack up a nice bill. Trying to keep the pond 15ft max and like 1-3ft min should keep high oxygen levels right? Also adding 1-2 islands with points, adding 2 coves, NW corner is bass breeding heaven because its found to be warmer then the rest of the pond so im gonna get creative there(ideas welcome!) Then adding a flat and a drop off right off the flat and then ill add structure. want this place to be like a rollercoster!

Welcome to Pond Boss Fishkeeper1...

You've found the right place for planning your dream and making it happen. A trophy bass pond should be a reasonable expectation if you can build a 10-30 acre pond/lake. A pond/lake of that size aint gonna be cheap and certainly could be very expensive depending on the topography and soil characteristics of the property you eventually buy. So keep that in mind when looking for property. I have been searching for my future property and think I finally found the piece I want. I am shooting for a more modest 5 or so acre pond though.

Keep in mind that a typical pond can support about 100 pounds of bass per acre if heavily managed. So at 10 acres, you could support 1,000 pounds of bass. Not certainly could lead to several very nice TROPHY bass with plenty of other smaller bass mixed in to boot. If your sole goal is trophy bass, I'd definitely skip the addition of crappies to your pond.

Greg will be able to give you a good stocking plan once you finalize your property location and actually build the pond. A pond with 15' max depth is reasonable at 10 acres and an average depth of 5-6'. A 3:1 bank slope would be good. I would highly recommend an aeration system, although expensive will really boost the number of fish you can keep in your pond. Throw in a high quality feeding program and you will be way ahead of the game.

As JakeB said, check out some of the previous posts on structure, aeration, fertilization and other topics of interest. This forum is full of great info. I believe Greg is a big believer in the double the numbers of BG when stocking. I think for a southern pond/lake like yours, it may be a great tool. I also would consider stocking not only Florida LMB, but also consider at least a percentage of F1 bass and even some northern bass as well. Best of luck in your project!

Fishkeeper1:
Welcome! I'm sure many more will chime in later today. I would look into CNBG, I think they might do better than BG. I second CJ's suggestion of aeration, and look at feeding the BG/CNBG and maybe the LMB as well if you want fast growth rates. A friend in Texas has a 35 ac lake that he manages for trophy LMB and while he doesn't aerate, he does have a Texas Hunter feeder for the panfish/forage fish. He currently has LMB up to 10# and is shooting for 15#.

Brett, I also would get CNBG they are said to grow faster than regular BG and also are rather pretty. I assumed thats what you would get it never crossed my mind to mention them.

Also if he was to get true 30 acres of water would aeration help the deepest part of the pond or would it just help a little? or would it not be needed?

Where is the line if if any where a pond/lake needs no aeration?

At 30 acres I think a proper aeration system would be darn expensive and probably not needed... Dang, a 30 acre lake would be fun to manage!

A challenge I would love to one day have.

fishkeeper I read this quickly and do I know you not sure by comments if we have spoke or not, sorry. I will post here instead of a PM to you so everyone can give you an opinion. We are stocking bass next week for several clients who followed our quality bass plan. I expect the bass to be well over 3 lbs by October 2010. It would not be surprised to see some pushing 6 lbs by 2011. Also fyi we do lake design work to layout the fish struture and cover if your interested. let us know where you are located and I promise tommorrow to find sometime to put a good well thought plan on here for you.

thank you all for the help. But one noobish question to ask. Whats a CNBG or whatever? Ill probobly know the fish just not the short phrase. And thank you greg we are looking for a pond thats really anywhere in southern GA maybe in 1 yr or so but planning for the future never hurts. As for the pond size im now looking to downgrade to a 5-10 acre pond so its easier to aerate if needed and easier to manage fish population

Coppernose Bluegill

ok thank you on that. But i heard from an online site to stay away from CNBG??? I'll check for it again to see if im remebering whrong but pretty sure thats why to stay away from they because they breed too fast?? IDK im going to check on that now

Just checked i remebered wrong or it was a different source. I will be changing BG to CNBG

Fast breeders are nice - more forage! I'm asking this because I don't know the answer. Would it be O.K. to aerate a portion of a larger pond, or is it an all or nothing situation?

I have no clue esshup but I think something is better than nothing. I feel that if conditions were right for a fish kill, the fish would concentrate around the aeration system to stay alive. However if the pond was so big a fish never knew they aeration system was in the pond it may not do any good for that fish.

So all in all I have no clue

Yes part is better than none if its arranged/placed right. Yes fish can sense O2 levels and move to the good spots.

ok fishkeeper let us know what you are looking for. I have several real estate agents as clients and they let me know their inventory for property listings with lakes. You are way ahead of the game it seems if you have yet to even buy the property.
Also keep in mind 5 acres are so fairly limited on trophy bass production. I liek aeration but do not think it is 100% neccesary just another item you want if you can have it.

This is basically your plan I suggest if budget allows per acre to grow some monster bass. Ideally you would put in the forage fish September through March. Followed by bass fingerliings in June. Lots of vairiables could change this but in general this is the receipe.

cnbg 2000
res 400
fathead minnows 2000
golden shiners 10 lbs
crayfish 40 lbs.
threadfin shad 1/2 load ( ~2,000) (good up to 10 acres)
largmouth bass- florida- 25
largemouth bass- F1- 25

This is a 48:1 "bream" to bass ration plus all the extra forage. Good luck.

i am planning on making this pond 5 to 10 acres due to the fact that im going to buy over 1 ton of fish lol. Also unless totally required im not planning on an air pump. Also want some Leopard Frogs or Bull Frog habitat aroudn the pond so the topwater action will be good. (would love tips from people who know alot about amphibians!)