Welcome from another Missourian! It's nice to read about someone looking at a Flathead Pond. It is extremely rare that someone talks about it, let alone tries it. My novice opinion is that it should be pretty easy, BUT it will take time and once the flatheads are of impressive size...that will be relatively short lived.

If I were to try the flat head pond, I would stock FHM's first to build the forage for the BG and LMB. Then stock the BG and LMB (and RES) so that it would overpopulate and stunt within a few years. The sooner this happens the sooner the flatheads can go in. The longer it takes the better the bass fishing will be. Once the BG and LMB have overpopulated the pond, put in flatheads that can consume the smaller classes of stunted fish. The flatheads will grow without mercy for a few years. You would have the greatest flathead pond in the world! Can you tell this would be a dream of mine. From what I have read, the flatheads would eat themselves out of forage in short order if stocked in high enough numbers. Once the the BG and LMB forage becomes scarce, the flatheads will start to stunt themselves. You would want to harvest the cats before "skinny" sets in and start over.

If my small HBG and HSB pond ever gets stunted and/or out of whack, I will consider sourcing some flatheads in the 2-3 pound range to continue the cycle. 10 flatheads in my 1/4 acre pond would be about right to yield a few more years of fun fishing.

I do not think that one could sustain the forage base in a pond to continually stock flatheads unless they kept the stocking numbers ridiculously low. I would bet that a standard pond could host a flathead or two that on occasion would break a line, but once enough were put in to target the rest of the fishery would suffer.

Just my thoughts.

Fish on!,
Noel