Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose New lake, 3.5 acres

Guys, I'm a part of this subdivision of 20 homes who share a 3.5 acre lake. It's a new lake that has now been full of water for 6 months. The wildlife committee asked my help on stocking the lake...so now I'm asking the forum. Two things we will be doing are:
1. We're getting a water analysis done.
2. We're going to add structure.
One thing I will push for is aeration but it's not a given.

Beyond that, the goal is to provide fishing fun for the residents which to me means healthy and plentiful bluegill, high numbers of bass, and probably catfish, although I personally would not add catfish. I will advise that we supplement feed.

From reviewing the forum over the past year, I'd say we need to add FHM now. What quantities?

We need to follow that with CNBG and HBG, and probably shellcrackers. What quantities of each?

LMB we could probably add in the fall of this year. What quantities?

Finally catfish. Add next year?

Many thanks for your help.
David

David, WELCOME to PB!
Where in Texas - I'll beat Dave Davidson to the question he always asks - conditions vary between "Deep East Texas" and ElPaso as you well know.

The pros will give stocking advice - I have seen one "up-scale"shared homeowner pond absolutely ruined by stocking KOI - glad you came here first.

Plug for pure genetics CNBG - no consideration for HBG unless for small kid ponds - CNBG will outperform hands down in our area.

Good lock for your exciting program,
George Glazener

Thanks George. We are located about 40 miles west of Houston in Austin County. It's a "black land" lake, not sure that is important though but it could be. We also have a well so we will be able to keep the water level fairly constant.

Many thanks!
David

Welcome to the forum, David. Your county agent would be a source of information tailored to your area, actually, tailored to your pond.

Yea Dudley, not so much help. our county agent can tell all about grasses for grazing, types of plants for planting, but not fish for fishing. That's pretty much why I joined the forum.
David

David, that's also my experience on the County Agent.

Get the water analysis done first, then look to add fatheads. Since you're probably not in pine tree country(are you?) the water is probably fertile enough for fish. You can add bluegills or coppernose bluegills with the minnows. Bass and cats next year.

BTW, lots of bass and lots of nice BG don't always go together. Without some culling in the 2nd and successive years, the bass can easily over spawn and over eat the forage(BG) base. Nothing wrong with the cats. They can get hook shy but there's not many things more enjoyable than watching cats scoop pellets off the top.

Thanks David. No pine trees in the area.
Below is what the local fishery owner recommended.
Flathead minnows now 14000
Shiner minnows now 3500
Coppernose Bluegill now 1400
Hybrid Bluegill now 1000
Redear Bream now 350

Bass in the fall 350

Hybrid Channel Catfish next spring 1000

I'm recommending aeration and supplemental feeding.
Does anyone know about this "hybrid" catfish? Evidently they grow 30% faster and are more aggressive even going after lures.
Thanks
David

It all depends on your goals for the fishery.

If you want to grow large BG, then you want a LMB heavy pond, with the largest LMB no larger than 14" or so in length (even 3-5 years down the road - this means agressive LMB removal once they surpass that size). Stock 500 to 1,000 CNBG per acre, and 100-200 LMB per acre. I wouldn't bother with the HBG, the CNBG will outpace them in growth in a few years.

If you want to grow large LMB, stock 50 of them per acre and 3,000 CNBG per acre. Remove 14" and under LMB after year 3 to keep the LMB population low and the forage base high.

The FHM are there to give the newly stocked fingerling fish a good jump start on growth. After the predators are stocked, the FHM probably won't last a year before they are all eaten. No need to restock, they've done their job.

The Redears are in there to help with snail control, which will help control fish parasites.

The HBG are there to grow fast for the first few years, faster than the CNBG. They won't reproduce enough to make enough forage for the LMB. If the CNBG have enough food, they will grow fast and I don't know if the HBG will be necessary, but HBG are good for kids to catch. The Golden Shiners are there for forage for the LMB, and occupy a different nitche in the water column of the pond than BG.

The Hybrid Catfish will start competing with the LMB for live food (i.e. forage fish) once they get up and over around about the 3# mark. They are probably a hybrid between a channel catfish and a blue catfish.

If you are going to be feeding, make sure the LMB and sunfish are pellet trained, at least the CNBG and the HBG if you decide to put any in. Feed trained RES are hard to find. Not that big of a deal, but try to stock feed trained LMB if you can.

Or, don't stock any LMB at all. Instead stock Hybrid Striped Bass along with the rest of the fish. I think depending on # of HSB stocked, that they can keep the CNBG population under control when stocked along with the Hybrid Catfish. Just keep records of HSB removal and restock the amount of fish harvested annually.

I just reread the stocking numbers. That's a LOT of hybrid catfish. How many do you think will be removed annually? If not a lot, I'd think about stocking less in the beginning to see how many are removed annually. Stocking almost 300 per acre is a lot of mouths to feed if you are going to be stocking LMB too. They should be relatively inexpensive to stock if you find out that you need more, but might be tough to remove if a lot of C&R of them is done.

Esshup, great information and many thanks for the thoughtful reply. I'm not fond of the CC numbers and actually I'd like to not include them at all. With a community pond for 20 families, the goal will be "fun for families" and I think your idea of CNBG and not HBG is the way to go. Catching a lot of one pound bluegill and 2-3 pound bass is what I think we need to manage toward.

FYI; I rebuilt a 40 year old pond two years ago and you guys steered my in the right direction then. I've got a lot of 15 inch 2 lb LMB right now and some healthy CNBG.
Many thanks,
David

Going with the "fun for families" theme, I'd think about putting in the HBG then along with the CNBG. Think long and hard on how many LMB will be harvested. If people will be reluctant to harvest LMB, I'd toss around the thought of HSB instead of LMB, and put in 100 of those hybrid cats per acre. Maybe some of the other families want to catch cats for a fish fry?

Just thinking out loud here.

Essup, you might be onto something. I can see an annual "fish fry" maybe on the 4th of July where we decide what needs to come out and have a fishing competition for the kids.

Harvesting LMB: if you put in 400 LMB in fall of 2014 then theoretically you'd have 400 2 lb LMB in the fall of 2016. Obviously some will be lost for whatever reasons. Starting then in 2016 we should begin harvesting LMB. If we want trophy LMB then we harvest...100 bass each year with C&R on the largest? If we want large numbers we'd harvest something less; maybe 25-50 bass per year. Is that reasonable?

No, you need to harvest more bass.

There's a thing called carrying capacity, or standing crop. One pond, one acre in size can only hold so many fish (in pounds). For an aerated, fed pond, lets go with around 750 pounds per surface acre. You could push things more and get more pounds, but as a new pond manager, you need to be in tune with the ecosystem and react quickly to adverse conditions. If not, you could have a massive fish kill if something goes wrong (say you lost power for a week in the middle of summer and the aeration system wasn't working). So, lets start a ways away from the ragged edge so to speak.

O.K. 750 pounds of fish per acre.

Each LMB needs to eat roughly 10 pounds of fish to put on one pound of weight. So, 100 LMB per acre needs to eat 1,000 pounds of fish per year per acre, not including the weight of the LMB. Plus you have to have fish left over to spawn. Now with feeding you can mitigate some of that 1,000# of fish, more than likely bringing it down to only needing 700-750 pounds of fish for the LMB to eat (maybe less depending on how well they eat pellets), but that doesn't leave a lot in reserve to spawn and make new forage fish for next year. See where I'm going? Now if you had only 50 LMB in that acre, you would only need 500# of fish. That leaves plenty of fish to spawn the next year.

There's a pretty good thread in the archives on carrying capacity. That will help you understand it a bit better than my cliff notes.

Find another fish stocker/seller. I believe this guy may be looking out for his interests($) instead of yours.

MY opinion on how I would spend YOUR $.:

The fathead minnow # is OK.
I don't like the shiner minnows at all.
With bass predation, stock 2,000 BG or CNBG per acre.
OK on the HBG.
Increase the # of Redears to 20% of BG stocked.
Bass next year instead of the Fall. It sounds like this guy may want to let you buy any unsold bass going into winter.
I wouldn't stock over 100 cats per acre.
Consider some hybrid stripers along with the bass and cut down somewhat on the bass.
Ask all homeowners to please not bucket stock anything from area lakes. They probably will anyway.

Push hard for aeration.

Ok guys, I see where you are going. I'll adjust the numbers and hold off on the bass until next spring. I'll push for feeding and aeration.

+1 on having a "no bucket stocking" rule. A few well meaning (but uninformed) people can screw up the whole 3.5 acres with a few bucket fulls of fish (wrong species or wrong size).

+1 on the ideas of HSB. they are a super hit at my place. everyone loves to catch them, and there is little guilt to harvest as they are a put/take fish. IT is crazy to be fishing with a little bluegill bug on a 3 wt fly rod, and latch onto a 17 inch HSB... most fun of the day!