Hey Guys,
Its been a while since I've posted anything and to be honest its been a while since I was able to do much with my pond. About 2 years ago now we dug a 3 acre pond on our property to help with drainage and to get soil to build up an area to build our house. The pond is a "pit pond" and has no dam, its just a hole in the ground. the pond is rather deep in some areas, 16-18ft on one end and average depth around 10ft. I had made the pond deep with hopes of doing a coolwater species pond, using nighttime aeration in the summer to keep water temps low enough to sustain YP, SMB, maybe WE. Once I dug a bit deeper I found out that I'm not allowed to stock YP in my pond in Arkansas as they are not considered a native species. So now I am looking to develop a stocking plan that will meet the same goals as my original plan, using fish that I am able to stock.

A good starting point might be to list what my goals for this pond actually are. I want a place where I can have consistent action and I'd like to catch fish that are desirable to eat. Huge fish are not a priority for me.

Here's where I am at currently: Pond was completed nearly 2 years ago and has been full since about 3 months after that time. Water is chocolate milk colored due to suspended clay particles. We have pretty good vegetation all around the pond and the turbidity is due to the type of clay we have. We have done jar tests and we are in the process of determining a dosage of alum and lime and also sourcing the alum. My goal is to get this done before it starts warming up in the spring so that I will be ready to stock fish then. As far as cover in the pond, I have very little currently. We have about 6 Christmas trees in a couple of piles and a few pallets sunk in the pond and that's it. I had/have big plans for lots of manmade underwater structures but with the busyness of building our house over the last couple years I never got around to it. We did put about 10 pounds of FHM in the pond shortly after it was full the first year. I still see some of those around the banks but I don't feel they have exploded in population, likely due to the lack of structure and turbid water.

So now to the fun part, what should I stock and what kind of schedule should I shoot for? My biggest temptation right now is to try something using Hybrid Crappie. I know that's a dangerous path sometimes but they are one of my favorite fish to eat and I keep thinking there has to be some combinations of fish we can stock and management techniques that can sustain a healthy fishery using them. Because it would seem that I like to make things extra complicated I also have considered trying not to stock LMB. They are fun to catch but as far as eating, I'm not a big fan and in ponds near me that I have fished they always seem to overpopulate and stunt.

So what I have in my unexperienced mind is to try and stock BG, HBG, RES, and maybe some other sort of sunfish to build the forage base, along with the FHM that are already present. Then have HBC and HSB as my main predators. I have wondered if a annual stocking of tilapia could help with the crappie. I know a lot of the problem with crappie is they spawn earlier than BG and therefor the YOY crappie prey on the YOY BG. At first I thought that the TP wouldn't help with this much since they wont be able to be added until later in the season when the water warms up. But then I wondered, since BG have multiple spawns while Crappie typically have only one per season, could the tilapia take the pressure off of the later BG spawns and therefore allow them to keep up with the Crappie. This is all just speculation for me. Has anyone tried this and if so were the results positive? Any suggestions of alternative plans? Nothing is set in stone but Id like to get a plan together in time to put some fish in the pond this spring. The empty pond in the yard is just teasing me every time I look out there.