Hi all I'm a new member and looking for advice. Sorry for the long intro.

My parents built a new 1/2 ac pond that is about 5 years old. They originally stocked it with FHM, YP and HBG. It was great for a few years and then got over populated with HBG. They were told that the HBG were sterile and we soon found out that was not the case. So they asked me to assist them in what to do next.

The pond is 1/2 ac, 18ft max depth with steep banks on 2 of the sides. It has two air diffusers, they use a blue dye to keep the weed growth down. Most of the bottom is clay with some weeds around the edges. The pond is fed from a well that pumps ground water into the bottom of the pond. There are a million FHM, the HBG are about 5" with a few 7-8". The YP don't seem to be doing well as they get floaters of the big YP pretty often in the summer. This maybe due to the ground water discharge with no DO and high Nitrogen. Interested if this maybe true. Also I recently got rid of a lot of the stunted HBG from trapping and fishing.

Their goals are swimming, eating fish, low amount of weeds, and good fishing for their grandkids. And probably not having to stock every few years.

Here are the options as I see them, please let me know if you have any other ideas.

Option 1: Stock with 150 5-7" BG and 50 5-7" LMB. This is the easy button. Thoughts are that the LMB will wipe out a lot of the remaining HBG and the BG will eventually out compete the stunted HBG if they are remaining. The disadvantage is the YP will probably get wiped out and there's no going back with the LMB.

Option 2: Stock SMB instead of LMB with more YP and hope that remaining HBG don't eventually over populate the pond. I do prefer SMB over LMB, I don't know why but I do. I live in Wisconsin so I can't plant red ears as sometimes done. I've read a lot on this forum and it seems that SMB might be possible, but my worry is the remaining HBG and the SMB not being able to get rid of them.

I wish we could do BG and SMB but realize that is not recommended. I keep going back and forth but as of now I'm thinking that this is a small pond so I shouldn't be dreaming of a large population of large bass anyways. That we should just go with option 1 since small ponds and BG are made for each other.

Thats enough of a book for now, I've got pics of the FX generations of the HBG if anyone is interested. I appreciate every ones incite and this seems like a great place to learn a lot. I'm excited for the journey ahead. I got a subscription to Pond Boss and can't wait to get my first issue.