Pond Boss Forums INTRO New Forum Member Introduction Stocking new pond in Southern,Indiana

I have a new 3/4 acre pond and would like to stock this spring. The pond is about half full now and 23' at the deepest point with several ledges and a small island.
I am considering LMB,CC and BG. I enjoy catching fish to eat, but will probably not keep many LMB. I do have an automatic feeder that I will install on my dock. Any advice on hybrids or stocking rate for my pond?

Welcome to the forum Rukkus!!! Are there any specific goals for fish you want to catch in your pond?

The following assumes you want what is typically a balanced recreational pond for fishing with lots of average sized fish being caught along with an occasional big fish.

To answer your question about "Hybrids", I'll assume you mean Hybrid Bluegills (HBG). HBG will not produce enough offspring to feed your LMB or CC. The CC will eat the pelleted feed, but unless you stock feed trained bass, normal LMB will not eat feed. Many feed trained bass will go off feed also. Hybrids also do not grow sinificantly larger or faster than straight BG either, plus the offspring of HBG are small, inferior fish that use precious space in your pond.

If I were delivering the fish to your pond for stocking, I would attempt to talk you out of stocking the hybrids and to go with a 10 BG to 1 LMB stocking ratio. I would not suggest more than 75 CC in your pond either.

Before stocking your LMB I would add 25 pounds of fathead minnows, plus 10-20 pounds of Golden Shiners as forage for the new fish to eat. You could even give Yellow Perch a shot as something diffenent to catch with a great taste.

You can stock YP, FH and GSH now before everything else, or add the BG with them or stock all these fish this coming Spring. CC could also be stocked early but may eat some of the LMB which should be stocked this Fall after your forage base is well established and reproducing.

You will still need to remove a lot of LMB after the second year to reduce over-population and stunting. The CC will need to be restocked to replace the fish removed (Plan to and try to catch 30% of your CC annually to prevent them from becoming too large) When you start fishing, keep any CC caught to avoid them becoming hook shy!

Hybrid stripped bass (HSB) are fairly good eating (esp when smaller <16"), eat pellets well, grow fast, fun to catch, and legal in IN. IMO stock 16-30 in 3/4ac when with LMB. You may want to stock them in place of CC; or split your CC stocking and the other portion be HSB. I would not stock CC in a pond unless you really like cleaning and eating catfish, plus esp not 75 in a 3/4 ac pond (unless intent is to eat lots of them). IMO farily abundant(20-60/ac) large pellet eating CC are a nuisance in a bass-BG pond by creating more turbid water. IMO HSB result in fewer pond problems.
Pelleting eating yellow perch (YP) will diversify your panfish; at least during the first 6-8 yrs. To stock reduce the BG numbers and replace them with YP.
Plan to aerate the 1st - 3rd yr with bottom aeration to improve the fishery.

In a pond less than 1 acre, I would try to use as many pellet eating species. HSB, CC and BG are all reliable pellet eaters. YP and LMB can be purchased pellet trained. Smaller ponds are harder to manage because of the small amount of biomass they support. The use of pellet trained fish means you can stock more and have larger fish. Consider obtaining all pellet trained fish. I am not a fan of LMB in ponds smaller than 1 acre. I think obtaining a long term balance with them is challenging at best. I am not saying it can't be done, but just takes a lot of work. I really like the idea of low/none reproducing fish in ponds on 1 acre. SMB can also be a consideration. In my 0.4 acre pond, I went with RES and SMB but didn't place any rocky structures for the SMB to spawn on. This should keep them from overpopulating. HSB and YP would also be good options, particularly if you work hard in keeping the YP from over reproducing.

Hybrid Bluegill are alot of fun to catch but I would discourge stocking them. Right now I have a pond stocked with hybrid bluegill and largemouth bass and the bass are underweight. I have dealing with underweight bass past 3 years and the my pond is 9 years old.

Thanks, for the advice on the HBG.
Will GSH and FH reproduce?
Also I noticed your wwwtilapiastockers.com
I have been doing some reading about raising them in 4' cages.
Do you have any info or sites I could go to to learn more?

FH will reproduce 4 or 5 times a year laying 400 to 500 eggs each time. Bass and Bluegill will eat them until they are nothing left of them in the pond. Golden Shiners reproduce 1 a year producing about 20,000. If GSH have enough habitat to hide in they will flourish.

For something a bit different think about the same forage fish (GSH, FHM) but RES, YP, SMB, HSB. BG will breed too quickly for SMB to keep them under control. There is some differing views if HSB will keep them under control. Since you are pellet feeding, the fish should grow quickly. I'll bet Rex can get pellet trained SMB, YP and HSB.

You can always add LMB if you don't like the SMB, but you can't get SMB established with LMB in the pond.

In your initial post you mentioned that you enjoyed eating fish, but wouldn't keep many LMB. Is it safe to assume that you want to eat the BG and CC? What about stocking CC and HBG together? Both of those species have very little reproductive potential, they readily take to pelleted feed,and you could add a handful of HSB to control what reproduction does occur. The downside is that this pond would require a definite hands on approach in the form of adding new fish as the older, larger fish are caught and eaten. Could get expensive, Not a "stock-it-and-forget-it" scenario at all. Just a thought.

Not keeping many LMB is one the biggest problems we hear about. They are quite successful spawners and create what we call a bass heavy pond. They overeat their forage base and become stunted.

If you aren't going to control the bass, I wouldn't stock them.