Hi Everyone,
I am so glad I found this forum. I have been reading for a couple weeks and you all are so helpful. My husband and I bought a house in the country that was a forclosure and there is a pond in back that is just slightly smaller than a 1/2 acre. We live in NW Ohio. The neighbors said the house has been empty for 2 years so nothing has been done with the pond for at least that length of time. We found it did have two aerators but the motor didn't work. We tried to fix it, nope, had to buy a new one and have had them running 24/7 for two months. There were a bunch of cattails and we have removed all but just a few of those. The pond has hundreds of frogs. They are everywhere. It is surrounded by trees so there has to be a very large build up of muck in the bottom. We have tried to rake some of it out but of course can only get the edges. I have been using copper sulfate, some cutrine plus and aqua shade. There is really tall stringy alge on one side where the cattails were and some duckweed. We measured approx. 10 feet at center and the rest of the pond is about 7 ft deep. Hard telling how many feet of muck in the bottom. We do not plan on swimming in it. Too disgusting for that but we would like to stock it with some fish. Our Soil and Water office is having a fish sale and we would like to put some in but don't know what to buy or how many to buy. They offer blue gill, channel cat, lg mouth bass, yellow perch,white amur and fathead minnows. I've heard both good and bad about the white amur....any thoughts? We aren't big fishermen but would like to throw a line in once in awhile. Maybe eat some of the large ones and probably throw back smaller ones. Should we try to stock fish this fall or should we wait and try to clean up some of the muck first? Should we start with just a few fish and see how it goes? Again, I don't have any idea of what to stock and how many. We would like to have some lg mouth bass but should we stock the bluegills and minnows first? Someone also suggested throwing a small pine tree in for the little fish to hide in. We just cut one down that we could do that with. We are so new at this and don't have any ideas of how to go about starting to stock it. There are no fish in there now, just tons of frogs. Thanks so much for the help.