Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose 3/4 acre pond, YP in southern Indiana

Question was: "What kind of time frame would you estimate that it would take before you could harvest fish in these numbers?" When to harvest and how many to harvest in a pellet feeding situation is really dependent on the goals for the pond. Some important factors to consider are amount of recruitment, the current population density, and the structure of the age classes (range of sizes).

IMO the first thing to evaluate is about how many of the 1,100 YP are still present. You are going to best DIY evaluate this in your 1ac pond by counting the number of spring spawn egg ribbons and more accurately watching about how many YP are showing up at pellet feeding 2-3 weeks after the spawn i.e. post spawn, and how long each quart of pellets lasts once they hit the water. In most small ponds (0.3-0.7ac) a high density of YP can consume about a gallon of pellets in 10-20 minutes. Total amount of feed consumed during post spawn feeding sessions is also a good guide for YP density. When the feeding activity noticeably decreases then the pellet eating population is satiated.

For YP, as the water temperature gets higher than 78F-80F total pellet consumption noticeably decreases especially for larger perch. In the warmer 80F-85F water smaller YP less than 9" will often still surface to eat pellets although the aggressiveness often decreases. Hand feeding daily or periodically during post spawn is the best way to get a fairly good idea of the YP density during feeding times.

Once you have a visual estimate of the YP numbers then you can safely harvest 20%-30% of the population. Another item to help evaluate the harvest number is how abundant do the 6"-8" perch appear to be either at feeding time or caught by angling? These smaller YP are the ones that will grow to harvestable size for the next year. If you are not seeing or catching numerous 6"-8" YP then reduce the number of YP that are harvested for that year.