Since your goal is swimming and your favorite fish is perch, you can raise yellow perch very successfully in a 1/3 ac pond. If you use perch and if you don't harvest enough perch to control their reproduction, I suggest you use as a predator either walleye, hybrid striped bass or smallmouth bass - in that order. Although with proper management predators are not needed to control perch numbers.
If you stock pellet trained perch you can easily raise 13"-14" yellow perch in your pond. Type and number of predator fish present will determine how many perch you can harvest each year. If you don't feed them pellets then expect there to be fewer YP per acre and the size to be mostly 8"-11".
IMO forget using largemouth bass if you stock perch(YP) and use tilapia for algae control. LMB eat too many of the little alga eating tilapia and it costs more to add more adult tilapia to get good algae control.
I know of several local ponds that have and stock only some tilapia each year. Those ponds are very clean and owners are very impressed how clean the tilapia keep the beach area and shorelines. I am suggesting that all new swimming ponds in my area try just tilapia for the first year. If you don't like the only tilapia option then it is very easy to start a completely new fishery next year.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 03/28/17 03:08 PM.
