Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose What species will work best in my ponds?

I finished digging my ponds last summer, and they still have about 2ft of water level to rise as I had them pumped out pretty much empty last fall while working on the clay lining.

I'd like to start adding fish, minnows now, and then the rest of the fish in spring 2010.

You can see my pond construction thread here: ETD66SS Ponds

Unfortunately a lot of the picture links in the beginning part of that thread are dead, but for the latest pictures just look on the last page.

Here is a layout of the ponds: Ponds Layout

Right now the small pond is 10ft deep, and the large is 9ft deep. They should both reach 12ft deep after the winter/spring months. I still have not decided if I want to connect the ponds together with a culvert, or put in two separate overflow swales. Would different fish in each pond be a good thing?

Even though the ponds are not totally full, I'm thinking I can add minnows now?

I found this online, it's about Ohio ponds, but I figured my ponds being in Western New York, the species plan should be quite similar: Species Recommendations

Here is the hatchery I'd be buying the fish from: Smith Creek Fish Farm

Any expert advice?

I would love to have a few northern pike in my large pond, but I doubt the water is deep/cold enough? I'd really also like a few novelty walleye, but again, I could not dig the ponds to the 20ft depth I wanted... It seems my choices are very limited.

I would stock different fish in each pond. What type of fish do you like to fish for?

If it were me I'd do one pond as a LMB/Sunfish pond and maybe the other pond as a SMB/Yellow Perch pond.

That way you can have different fishing experiences at each pond.

But wait for an expert opinion, I'm just an idiot with a fast keyboard.

With two ponds, you have a lot of options... But before I can give you good advice, what do you want out of your ponds? Trophy bass, trophy sunfish, a good balance, lots of fish easy to catch but not necessarily large, moderately sized fish for eating, etc...

Do you like to fish for catfish? Do you like to eat catfish?

Do you plan to aerate your pond or feed your fish?

Are you heart set on using Smith Creek or would you consider another source for at least some of your fish?

Other possible options:
http://www.hicklingsfishfarm.com/
http://www.buybass.com/

Those hatcheries have a larger selection in species available, which would widen your options. If you stick with just the species available from Smith Creek, you're fairly limited...

Let me know what you think and I'll put together some possible options for you.

I don't think SMB would survive?

The large pond, I'm thinking LMB, Redear, Minnows & Channel Cat. I do not want BG. And maybe a few walleye & northern pike if the experts think they may survive.

The small pond, I'm not really sure.

No, Smith Creek was just the hatchery that the local DEC fellow gave me, I'll go anywhere...

I guess I want large fish to catch, LMB & Catfish. Sunfish and maybe perch for kids, etc

I'm hoping for a more "stock & forget" type of management as opposed to having to micro-manage the ponds...

I am not confident redear(RES) would do well in western NY... SMB, they would do just fine in your 1 acre pond. They may have a hard time reproducing, but check out some of the information on SMB in ponds on the forum and you'll see how successful they can be. Failure of SMB in ponds is most often due to competition with LMB. If you keep LMB out, SMB do quite well...

Northern pike aren't suitable for a 1 acre ponds. A hand full of walleye could work.

If I had your ponds, I would go this route for your ponds.

For your larger pond:

ASAP, stock 10 pounds of fathead minnows(FHM) and 10 pounds of golden shiners(GSH).

Next spring stock 50 SMB and 50 yellow perch(YP).

Next fall, stock 10 to 20 walleye(WE).

The following spring stock 50 more SMB, and 300 pumpkinseed sunfish(PS).

You have a northern pond, you want to give your SMB some size to them before you stock the PS. This will give them a chance to properly control your PS. PS are not RES, but are similar in many ways, but PS do reproduce much faster than RES do. I feel if you give your SMB a head start, they will control the PS allow with the handfull of WE you stock.

Your WE will not reproduce in your pond. I would restock them every other or every third year to maintain the novelty fishery... If you have no confidence in SMB, but I think if you read about them on here, your confidence will go up, you can switch out LMB for them. Or, later stock LMB into your bass without much detriment. Just know, they LMB will quickly outcompete the SMB and they will be extirpated.

For your smaller pond:

ASAP, stock 3 pounds of fathead minnows(FHM) and 3 pounds of golden shiners(GSH).

Next spring stock between 50 and 150 channel catfish(CC). The number depends on just how many CC you plan on harvesting for the table each year and if you will be feeding your fish... The CC will not naturally reproduce, so you will simply restock the number you took out plus the small number of natural mortality each year. The CC will hammer the FHM and GSH, but will not eat them all(particularly if you feed your catfish)... You can net this pond and collect excess FHM and GSH to add to supplement your larger pond's forage base.

Just my thoughts...

I can stock minnows now in the middle of the summer?

Oh, and those 2 green sunfish that made it through the trash pump last year, are alive and well in the small pond. They are already ~8" long.

I read that they are not good fish to have in a pond, I tried to fish them out with ho luck. Then I tried a .22 rifle, no luck. Luckily they both appear to be males, they both made nests and are guarding them. Do I need to get rid of them before putting in minnows? Sounds like $$$ down the drain if I let them gobble up the minnows...


I'm fearful of a SMB setup in my shallow ponds, but I'll read up on them here.

Yes, you certainly can stock minnows in the middle of summer. Don't overcrowd them on the trip from the fish farm and keep them as cool as possible, they'll be fine...

I would try to get rid of them... Green sunfish are usually pretty aggressive. Try a small piece of worm on a small hook on light line... If they are both male and only two of them, they'll eat some of your FHM, but plenty will survive. Depending on the size you get, but if you get a mix, many of your GSH should be too large for a GSF to eat... If they are both males, I almost would be tempted to leave them in there and grow a couple of monsters. They will get giant!

I guess until some females find their way in there Those two buggers found my pond very quickly, it didn't have water in it for more than a few months and boom, they were in there.

They are 1 year old, and are already 8" or so, I guess they're supposed to max out at 9" and have a 6 year life span. They have feasted on tadpoles for sure!

Oh, at this point I have ZERO structure in the ponds, I never had the time to make anything. What should I put in there for the FHM, and how deep? I'm not fond of unsightly stacked pallets, I can see 5-6ft into the depth of the water in these ponds.

flat pieces of concrete, rocks, bricks, etc... FHM will utilize those to spawn on. They should be in water 6" to 18" in depth. Christmas trees laid on their side make great cover for them to hide in. 1' to 3' in depth would work well for that purpose.

I have just read that FHM lay their eggs upside down (normally on the underside of lillypads), hence the stacked pallets.

I do have plenty of pallets, I guess I will do that.

Do a forum search on FHM or anything else that may be of interest to you... You'll be amazed at all the info on this site!

Pallets will do well for FH. Just space the pallets out around the pond in shallow water. If needed tie on a piece of rope and tie it to a stake onshore so it does not float off.

Will an aquifer fed pond have lower water temps in deeper water than a fully clay lined pond that just holds the same water all the time?

I really want to try a SMB, WE & YP pond. But it sounds like a waste of money in a 10-12ft deep pond.

I would say an aquifer fed pond would have temperatures closer to the ground water temp than a sealed pond. This would normally mean cooler in the Summer, warmer in the Winter.

That is my hope.

I need to buy a thermometer and do some data acquisition

Even a clay lined pond in western NY will stay cool enough for SMB, YP and WE... We have a forum member raising SMB in in a smaller pond in the heat of Arizona!

Well, the green sunfish have vacated the premesis:

Got 'em

He grew a lot in 1 year:

Last May

Last Sunday they would not go after the worms, so I had a .22 rifle and tried to shoot them when guarding their nests. I took many shots but it seemed like I missed them. When I went today to fish them out, I saw a dead green sunfish floating. I saw no bullet wound, so not sure if the bullet slowed down and just klobbered him on the head or what... The fish I caught today I took to my fathers very small cattial choked pond, very shallow. Not sure if he'll make it, but...

Anyways, the other pictures there show some of the plantlife I have, as well as a few of the very many frogs.

Foliage

Time for FHM's!

That GSF looks like it's thinking, "You better get me in some water or I'm sending some bluegill to break your kneecaps."

That is a gorgeous GSF! JHAP and DIED would be proud... You eat them?

I have never eaten sunfish, I'm a perch/walleye man myself...

Depending on what part of the country you are in, that IS a perch!

Or a puhch.

I'm no expert, but I've been working on the balancing of species in my pond since building it three years ago. Based on the small size of the 1/3 acre pond, I doubt you will ever sustain allot of larger/ preditor fish in there. I would recommend using it as in incubator for minnows and smaller fish you want to protect. That way you can use the bigger pond for the lunkers and keep them from eating everything, which has been a problem for me.
As far as the connector pipe, that may be good for the water flow/quality depending on where the source(s) and discharges are.
I have about 1/2 acre pond in western PA w/ spring feed. I'm trying to balance golden shiners, perch, and LM bass.

Don't know how I missed the first portion of this thread previously, as in the portion with your question...

I have a little different take on what you should/can do. First of all, Northern Pike would be absolutely fine where you are, and a one-acre pond is plenty big enough. Years ago I stocked twenty - yes, twenty - 12" Northerns into a two-acre pond that was badly overpopulated with tiny GSF and not much else; I also stocked twenty or so yearling LMB I caught from nearby ponds. A year later I stocked 75 6" walleye. Three or four years later the pond owner told me someone had caught a three-foot Northern from the pond. LMB of four to six pounds began to be caught with great regularity, including one well over seven that a good friend of mine caught. A six-pound walleye was caught about that time as well. I had begun feeding when I stocked the pike and bass, and within two years of stocking the pike the bluegill were averaging 8" and had righted themselves such that the GSF were no longer the dominant sunfish species in the pond. There were HUGE bluegill and sunfish both that we saw feeding at the feeders, but I only fished the pond a couple times and never caught any of the largest ones.

So my point is, if pike and walleye can do well in a 2-acre pond in TN, they certainly can do well in NY. I read recently of a pond owner who has two 1.5 acre ponds in Ohio or Illinois that he stocked with tiger muskie because his bass were overcrowded, and now not only his bass but also his bluegill are larger because the ponds are more balanced.

You mention you'd like to have a pond that requires minimal management. If you are serious in that desire, you're going to have to have some species of forage that spawns heavily enough to not be denuded by predation by the LMB, and the pike if you stock them. If your pond were ten acres or larger, you could stock threadfin shad, but with the size of your pond, bluegill would be your best bet. PS might also be a good option; I haven't seen a pond around here that had many of them, but I'll take CJ's word for it that they do well in ponds up that way as I know I've seen a lot of photos of them from that area.

So I would say, don't hesitate to stock pike; they'll do more in the way of giving you a pond that stays balanced year in and year out, with minimal time on-site by you, than anything else you could do. You could stock 2-5 per acre. They would not only help keep the bluegill from overpopulating, which from what I've read is an even bigger problem up north than in the South (and it's a huge problem here, trust me), they would also keep your bass from overpopulating so that the bass that live get much, much larger than they would in a pond in which they have overcrowded.

My suggestion for the one-acre pond:
350 bluegill or PS
150 redear
50 LMB
50 walleye
5 Northern pike

For the 1/3 acre pond:
100 bluegill
50 perch
30 LMB

The perch will help keep the bluegill in check in the smaller pond, and will in turn be kept in check by the bass; as the bass get larger they'll eat some of the smaller perch and have a larger top-end potential than they might with just bluegill. I would keep this pond simple due to the size, and feeding supplementally would increase significantly the overall potential/capacity of the pond both in numbers and size of fish.

SMB, perch and walleye will do fine in a 10-12 ft deep pond in western PA. The biggest problem for them would be too much snow cover on the ice for extended periods and winter kill not the summer temperatures. Deep water needed for walleye and perch at our latitude is a myth. I raised all those above in a 7-8 ft deep pond in western OH for over 10 years. IMO the pike when larger (28"-36") will annually eat more large perch and 7"-11" bass than BG. Also included in pike diet are 10"-12" walleye (if present) since walleye are slender bodied. Larger stocker walleye (6"-10") are pretty expensive food for pike unless your wallet is fat.