Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Help with new pond

Got permission to fish a new pond about 1 acre. Fished it 5 yrs ago thru ice And cAught lots of small bluegill and 1 5lb bass. Fast forward to now and fished it past 4 days and seems all I catch are 5in green sunfish and see carp splashing. It’s about 70yrs old and 10ft at the deepest. Nebraska location. I like perch and crappie which are awful for small ponds I know but there are millions of minnows and Frye that I can see. If a guy put in 5 to 7in crappie and perch will the green sunfish keep their spawn in tact?? All ideas appreciated. Thanks. I did buy a trap to hopefully see what else in there but thus far no signs of actual bluegill only green sunfish and 5 yrs ago I caught only bluegill.

I expect there are plenty of bluegills. They spawn repeatedly and green sunfish only once per year. Crappie in a small pond could give you a bunch of runt crappie.

My novice thoughts are...If you have a heavy population of GSF already, experimenting with crappie and perch can't make it any worse.

I'm not privy to yellow perch info, but putting crappie in the pond is kinda like putting in more GSF, other than the potential for a large fish if things work out for you. The both can overpopulate a small BOW rather quickly.

I would certainly do more investigation as to what is actually in the pond before stocking any thing else. You may have better luck killing the pond off and starting fresh.

Then again, a lot of GSF can be a nice start to a catfish pond or even growing some nice bass.

As far as GSF controlling the Crappie and perch YOY, it sounds like they, the GSF, have plenty to eat now with all the fry and minnows. I doubt that adding small crappie or perch forage would mean much to them if forage is abundant already.

I'm just thinking out loud, just my 2 cents worth if that!

I like your thinking Quarter Acres. Looking forward to seeing what I can all catch in the trap the next few weeks. May also buy a seine net and try to capture some of the carp in the shallows. At this point, I don't think adding some crappie and perch are going to make the place any worse than it is. I actually think the crappie and perch will explode with all the forage in their. After a couple years they may start overpopulating but I will tackle that when it happens. I'd hate to kill it off with that amount of forage already in the pond even though there are many GSF. Boy, the GSF that I'm catching are about 6in and FAT! May also add a few hybrid striped bass this fall as well to introduce a fun predator fish to help. To my knowledge there is not many, if any, catfish in there so the only real predator fish may be some bass that i have not seen or caught yet. Thanks again for the thoughts.

Was able to spend some time at this pond today. First tried seine net but quickly found that the water was about 6ft deep on the inside of the cattails which surround 95 percent of the pond. So, we decided to get in the Jon boat and fish it. Fished for 2hrs without a bite. I also had my lx7 to closely watch depths and fish activity. Did not see a whole of marks for fish and deepest spot was 13ft with majority at least 7ft. The only big observation I can make is there are many of carp as they are jumping etc. and absolutely thousands of minnows and Frye. The minnows in my trap sure appear to be fatheads and I can’t determine any other species in my trap but I’m no expert when they are that young. So, considering I don’t own this pond and I’m highly doubtful the owner would be in favor of killing it what are some ideas? My initial thoughts were that there are many bass in this place but I have not seen one nor caught one. Likewise with bluegills. With all the cattails around this pond would that make it hard for fish to actually spawn as there is basically no shallow water for fish to spawn that is not overtaken by cattails. Can’t get over the gobs of baitfish. Obviously must be lacking of predators. Help

Lacking predators or just so much cover the forage fish have a lot of places to hide and reproduce.

GSF are predators for small fish. A 6" GSF has about the same mouth gape as a 6" LMB. It is just that they do not get very big.