With 8 acres in SC you can really make a trophy bass fishery! Anyone know if threadfin shad would overwinter there? If so they should definitely be stocked. I would also add red eared sunfish, coppernose bluegill, golden shiners, grass shrimp (they are cheap and provide small forwage for your young bluegill and bass, stock once you have some established vegetation), crayfish, and fathead minnows to the forage base.

Listen to the guys on here as far as structure goes, it sounds like you want big largemouth and a crappie population, guys here will tell you exactly how to set up your underwater world.

As soon as your pond is dug and the strucure has been placed you should add a small amount of fathead minnows to any water that is holding. Fatheads can survive in shallow pools, spawn incredibly fast and give all your predators a good forage to gorge themselves on. Your 4-6" stocker Largemouth will be 9-11" by the end of the year eating every slow fathead in the pond. Stocking 1000 fatheads in March will give you millions (so many you can't see the bottom of the pond) in 3 months. Every last one will be eaten within two years, bass and crappie will eat the fatheads into extinction but by then they have served their purpose and your bass will be large enough to prey on bluegill shad and shiners.

Many people here like to get their forage base established before adding predators as bass and crappie can eat every bit of forage in short order. Giving your forage long enough to grow and breed means that the predators can eat the offspring but your brood stock remains to keep the base going. My pond was stocked with numerous varieties of forage fish in March and I don't plan on adding predators (smallmouth and yellow perch) until next fall. If you can use threadfin shad then you won't need to wait as long as I waited but adding fatheads/golden shiners/threadfin/crayfish then waiting 2-3 months before adding the bluegill/largemouth/crappie means you are far less likely to end up with starving bass in two years.

If your goals are for trophy largemouth you need to be careful of how many you stock. Stock too many and you will end up with smaller hungrier fish, stock too few and you will have some monsters that are hard to find (at least until they spawn a few times and their offspring grow to catchable size). The worst thing you can do is just call up the local fish truck guy and go with whatever he tells you, fish sellers will sell you what makes them the most profit and not necessarily what is best for your pond. There are a lot of good reputable fish dealers on this site that can help you. Speak to the experts here and come up with a stocking plan, that way you will establish your ecosystem for long term success and save money in the process.

Do not forget this vital fact: A bass has to eat 10 pounds of forage in order to gain one pound. If you have 1,000 bass in your pond you need 10,000 pounds of forage for all those fish to grow to 1lb.

Last edited by RockvilleMDAngler; 12/11/12 12:33 PM.