Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose On Mutt Pond

If YP presence are important you can always ladder stock them. Adding 20-30 YP(6"-8") each year is economical and will help a lot to keep the brood stock adequate and viable. In a pond your size 20-30 perch at early maturity size is acceptable recruitment in a mixed fish community and pond size similar to yours.

If it were my pond, I would reduce the predator size by 1"-2" to harvest when these predators are caught. Eat them. Walleye at 15", recruiting LMB at 13"-14", CC at 14"-15" all produce acceptable fillets. As you see more presence of small sunfish via trapping and angling, then you can increase the harvest slot limit size. Catching targeted predator fish is a lot easier to talk about compared to actually doing it. Been there done all that.

With CC having a tendency to become hook smart with each catch-release and the problem of selectively targeting, removing them, I would never release a CC of any size once it is 'landed'. In your situation I would never restock CC. IMO the last 1-3 CC of your current fishery will be quite difficult to catch even though they show up a feeding times.

With both LMB & SMB present in a small to medium pond do not ever expect to see recruitment of the SMB. I have yet to hear of it happening after many years dealing with smallies. If it ever happens, I want to hear about the pond size, habitat type and overall pond conditions. LMB have a STRONG repressive affect on the spawn and recruitment of smallmouth. I assume it is possible for SMB to recruit in a small lake containing highly complex habitat, but it would be extremely rare.