Excellent tips, I had not thought of strapping 3 barrels together for stability and I did order my quantities on the high side of the suggested ranges so I do not think I will add more for transport losses. I seems that the few fisheries I have dealt with a pretty generous with the numbers, we'll see.

It looks like my fish purchase has been put off by a week due to the fishery's busy delivery schedule (and I am a small buyer, I am sure, compared to the Dept of Conservation). This will give me a bit more time to figure out the other nuances.

My current plan is to secure the barrels with fish, get them to my pond, bucket out enough water from each so that me and a buddy can get the barrels out of the truck and into the pond (up to the point that they are sitting in the water, but not floating off), and add the water back in that was taken out. Then, if the fish are not struggling, give them 20-30 minutes to temperature acclimate, then start adding my pond water to the barrels over the next 20-30 minutes to acclimate them to the chemistry change...Then transfer the fish to a floating net circle that I made so that they can be confirmed, kissed, and released into the pond.

Who would have thought there would be so much to it?

A pump would help, but I do not have one borrowed just yet. I figure 1 and 5 gallon buckets should work. If the temps of the fish and water closely match my shore temps I can speed up the process my skipping the time for temp acclimation and get right to adding my pond water.

Picking up my own fish is all due to the sorting and confirming "thing". If I could trust that I would not get any hitchhikers, I would just have them back up to the pond and dump them in. I have seen pictures of fish trucks with the dump valve open and fish and water just gushing into the pond. No acclimation at all! Am I missing something here? Am I just used to my old aquarium days when it would take a half an hour to acclimate a fish and get it into the tank.

Fish on!,
Noel