Your final decision will mostly depend on how long your are willing to wait and do extended time fish removal, maintenance, and some frustration due to complications and slow progress along the way. If you want good angling with good quality fish fairly quickly in 2-3 yrs(renovation-restock) instead of 4-7 yrs using the selective fish removal system,,, then drain it down, renovate and restock. Using the correct approach / methods in a renovated pond as suggested on this PB Forum you in Georgia can grow 8"-9" BG in two years with bass being 1.5-2 lbs after just 1 year of stocking in the GA pond. Others have done it, you can too if you follow the correct stocking-management procedures. However to do this, it takes active GOOD management practices and not just stocking and letting nature takes its course. Note -- one of the newer approaches used by the most progressive fishery managers is to stock close to 300BG to every 1 LMB. This will give you a good idea what it takes to quickly grow bass or Blucats(BC) - Food, Food, Food - pellets and forage This approach would also likely include growing BlueCats. Do some good homework before pulling the trigger on your pond project.
Lots of this progressive fish growing information has been in back issues of Pond Boss magazine and in older posts on this forum. Check the PB archives for Common Pond management Topics & Questions and for complete yearly Indexes to back issues of Pond Boss magazine. There has been some discussion and 1 or 2 articles in the magazine about blue catfish in ponds. They are a 'BIG' predator and can quickly create an unbalanced fishery in small ponds. This is usually due to inadequate forage - in terms of sizes and numbers.
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