" I'm not sure if the manager over there would be willing to accommodate for it (he doesn't show much interest in investing in his pond/lake and is happy with the tiny fish it holds)."
This would really bother me.. to a point I wouldn't put a minute of effort into this until you have some sort of understanding (maybe in writing) that he's not going to change something or decide after you've put in considerable effort, that he doesn't want "X" and isn't going to flip-flop on you.
That extremely shallow water (1-2') if vegetated at all, may hold more fish than you think.
I would approach this with either electrofishing samples by someone that really KNOWS what the results mean, or Trap nets (Fyke) to see just what you have. At 16 acres, there's a LOT of areas that may or may not hold fish that you think are there-and possibly some you don't think are there.
Not to be negative but I feel you have quite a bit of work to do here before trying to add other species that may cause a less than desirable effect.
Very understandable point of view and I appreciate it. From what he tells me, they don’t have anymore intentions of stocking it again and will leave it “as is” since no one really fished it anyway. The few people I’ve seen trying to fish it are always targeting bass and I’ve never seen anyone catch any. I’m not putting much, if any, money into it. It’s just something we’re doing for fun and I’m more interested to see if we can get blue cats to breed in there and make it a nice little catfish lake. If we could consistently pull 2-3 pounders out of it at some point, I’d call it a success.
