Ok, thanks for the input Russell. I stocked my main pond with LMB last fall, so the tentative plan is as these fish gain size to catch some of them and transfer over to this old refurbished pond. It appears that at the stocking rate of 100 LMB per acre on my main pond (3 acres, 300 LMB), that is on the high side from what most of the experts are now recomending. So I should be able to catch some of these LMB and transfer them over to the old pond as needed. Old refurbished pond is about an acre.
As a further update to the "project"............. I have not caught any more GSF, although have only fished it a couple hours two different days. Hope to get more time to fish it to see what is there.
But............ did catch two yellow bullheads last night and four tonight. So the bullheads I suspected would be there are really there. Likely more than just a few.
So at this juncture I have to make a decision of when to put the apex predators in the pond. If those bullheads get a spawn off later this summer with nothing in the pond to control the offspring, I could end up with a pond full of stunted bullheads. All the bullheads looked very healthy (have been feeding them pellets
). A couple were 9", the others were slightly smaller.
Also put in 100 more + or - 1-2" RES and who knows what else. See thread
Ye old fish truck strikes again. I picked out about 50 of the biggest and best to grow out in my forage pond, another 50 or so went 25 each to son's and daughters refurbished ponds, and the remaining went in this pond. Was going to put some in my main pond, but with the uncertainty surrounding what I was getting, did not want to take the chance of contaminating my main pond. So this pond got whatever these fish were, that were supposed to be RES. Hopefully most were actually RES. With them being small fish (that I am not good enough at identification of such small fish), they might end up being a snack for the bullheads or GSF. Fish were supposed to be 3-4" but what was left over after keeping the biggest for the forage pond, they were more like 1-2".
May have another 250 1-3" RES to put in later as the fish truck promised to bring some more because of my dissatisfaction from the first bunch of fish. They could not promise me larger fish.
So that is the situation as it stands. Now have to decide what to do about predators because of the bullheads.
Keeps it interesting I guess.
