Originally Posted By: DrLuke
Originally Posted By: canyoncreek
The nice thing about apex predators is that in a smaller pond you can control the numbers. It is to your advantage that your apex predator NOT reproduce. LMB tend to like reproducing in ponds and thus hundreds of stunted LMB and a management struggle. Walleye can be stocked in a put and take scenario where you can keep your total number in check. If you go into it knowing you will have to add a few stocker fish from time to time then you don't worry about natural reproduction. This also controls growth, the amount of forage available and gives you trophy fish.

This could apply to other apex predators that you would stock on an as needed basis (pike, pickerel, musky, etc)

If you did use SMB as your apex predator it would be to your advantage again if there was limited natural reproduction. This is why many gravitate to HSB as they don't reproduce in most ponds (although there is a link recently on this site that showed reproduction in action). Check if HSB are legal in your state and they can give thrills to anglers better than any walleye ever caught. (think cranking in a underwater tornado (HSB) vs dragging in a slow moving logpile (larger walleye))

a crappie, YP, HSB only pond would be an awesome experiment in a 3-5 acre pond. I would think there would be plenty of forage (even without FHM or GSH) but if you wanted the option for a little extra forage and some built in algae control, think about throwing in some tilapia as well (if legal in your state).




Canyon-
Our pond is 2.5 acres, ave 8 feet deep, heavy silt bottom, 40 years old (highly eutrophied) and is BCP pond primarily. Forage is BG based. I have no minnow production that I've found or seen. I have crawdads as well (re: bull frog volcano thread from last year). I have caught a single LMB in past year (11 inches, didn't get a weight). I have been planning to shift the fishery to something other than BCP, and the idea of YP and HSB sounds intriguing. I have air in the pond now, to help offset a higher biomass as well. And despite many threads discussing BCP needing larger BOW to do well, ours seem to thrive in this 2.5 acre BOW. We can easily catch 11-13 inch fish, with largest 14.25 inches to date. I may be crazy to contemplate fiddling with the fishery, but more species is appealing. Any thoughts?


You likely have a dense population of 8-12" LMB which are hammering all YOY BCP before they have the opportunity to overpopulate and stunt. The BG you catch should also probably be on the larger size, as few make it through the LMB gauntlet. Are these findings consistent with your collection efforts/data?

If this is the case, your fishery is skewed towards trophy panfish at the expense of the LMB. This is not a bad thing, depending on your goals, you've [perhaps unintentionally] created a remarkable fishery. If you want to try and get YP established, bear in mind the front line of LMB you'll need to circumnavigate. If you were my client, I'd recommend caging small YP and growing them to 8"+ and releasing. This is probably the cheapest route, but also time consuming and requires some effort building cages and feeding them daily. The shortest route is the most expensive - that would be purchasing advanced YP 8"+. Those will cost a lot, and sourcing them won't be easy, but it's an immediate course of action. I purchased 400 YP from 6-10" this Spring but also paid dearly for them.

Remember, then, recruitment of YP will be very low due to high predation rates from your LMB, just like for your BG and BCP, so if you want to harvest YP and maintain a population you may need to supplementally stock adult YP annually to make up for harvest and predation. Good news is you are ultimately in control of YP populations, though, considering recruitment would likely be very low. This at least avoids any overpopulation issues down the road.

IMO, you actually have a better chance of establishing YP than a fishery featuring larger but fewer LMB as the existing LMB may find it difficult to hammer adult YP due to gape issues. A few 5# LMB could significantly impact YP populations even those larger in size in a hurry. While you may have a few exceptional LMB that made it through the gauntlet, they're probably low in number.

Stocking HSB will add additional biomass to the fishery, however, provided you feed them they may not impact the fishery to a significant degree. I would not go higher than 10-15/acre as a bonus fish if you are set on YP stocking, and I'd ladder stock those. Bear in mind you'll need to stock advanced fish here, too, as in the case with the YP, LMB will impact stocking unless you are using 8"+ fish. Further, I would ladder stock the HSB so you have multiple year classes present - so you're looking at stocking 5-8 fish annually or every other year for 4-5 years.

This population of HSB would be my recommendation keeping in mind your highly eutrophic pond - don't want to push carrying capacity too much or water quality issues could result in Summer/Winter leading to a partial or complete kill event. Larger/trophy fish are more susceptible to water quality issues than smaller fish - HSB would be vulnerable. We don't want kill events, not even small ones.

Hope some of this helps.

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. ~ Henry David Thoreau

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