My pond is approximately 300' long and 70' wide. It's completely surrounded by trees. It's pretty old. It was a gin tank a long time back according to my uncle. I have fished it many times over the years, but never caught anything. There are no signs of minnows. The only thing I see are lots of frogs. I'm not sure how deep it is, but I'm guessing it's pretty shallow and maybe only a few feet deep, but I've never seen it go completely dry. I was babtized in it nearly 45 years ago, and a few years later so was my lil Sis, so it's a special place to me. I want to have a place we can fish, so I had Overton do a water analysis. The good news it's in good shape.


Ph 7.5
Alkalinity 100 ppm
Hardness 84 ppm

The trees that surround it are a combination of hackberry, willow, mesquite, and black locust. When I was a kid it only had a few trees, but now it's a wilderness. I like the trees because they help with the highway noise. It's out in the middle of nowhere, but only 100 or so feet from a busy highway. So what's my goal?

Our family loves to fish. We fish several days a week. I was thinking of making it into a Bluegill pond. Not a trophy pond mind you, just a place to relax, pic-nic and fish. It does have vegetation under water. I don't see anything floating, but when I reel in my line, I have small amounts of stringy green stuff attached.

I'm not sure exactly how many BG or what size I should start with. I also thought about a few tilapia. What about FHM? Would they be beneficial as well? I will be getting them from Overton Fisheries. Let's say I start small with 5lbs of FHM and 100 BG. Should I hand feed them or let them survive on their own? Is this enough fish to start with? If so, At what point in time could we start to fish it?

Any and all thoughts and suggestions are welcome. I'm not opposed to other types of fish even catfish. We fish for whatever is biting. I wouldn't even mind stocking a bunch of rainbow trout next winter if I could find a place selling them.

Thanks for reading if you made it this far. I realize it was a long post.