Cecil and Ken:
I haven't had bad experiences like you two have had but I have had my head bitten off by a guy at a hatchery that is suppose to have a good reputation when I wanted to stock LMB in a one acre pond. Not only that but he didn't seem interested in selling me any fish at all. He was so rude I kind of felt violated, why what did I do to you. I guess I wasn't big enough for him. I finally found a place that would at least talk to me and they had a truck that stopped at a place twenty miles from me. They recomended I think 250 HBG, and 450 BG 2 or 3 inches I think I know they were tiny, 250 CC, which I found out had a lot of blue catfish with them 6" to 8"'s and 75 bass 6"'s. Well between the blues, my ex-wifes ducks, and herons, I think all the little bass got gobbled. I have never seen a bass in it since the first spring when I stocked them and they liked laying around the pond edges in shallow water sunning. But man I got huge blue cats the next and the third year. I think I have gotten all those out. I was also told that I needed to stock some CC every year since they needed running water to spawn. Nothing mentioned about nesting boxes.
So I went about three years trying to catch a bass, hoping at least a few survived and would spawn. About the time I decided to get some adult bass the drough hit for three years. Last year I finally started looking around on the internet for fisheries and found Todd Overton, he talked to me long time and answered a lot of questions. We got some pretty good fall rains about this time (late Oct.) and my pond filled up but I didn't know what the summer would bring. So I decided to see how much rain I would get in the spring and summer. Not bad getting back to normal, but here we still didn't get the flash floods and real heavy rain like places around us. But good enough to get some bass!
Anyway, as of two weeks today I have LMB's in my pond. And it is so nice to see the swirls they make.
It was blessing to find Todd Overton. One of the best things in comming across him was not just him being such a nice person, but he has a link to this forum and that is how I found it and joined.
And after finding this forum, I'm not only happy I got some bass, now I want to manage where I can get some decent BG. And luckly I found out LMB was the key.
So Ken I'm happy you got your trout, and Cecil I know that feeling, "what did I do." I was lucky I didnt have to make a long drive before getting the brush off. When you find someone that doesn't treat you like a pest or a mark you found something!
Bill
