I think you'll have a tuff time finding WAE in the spring, probably tuff finding SMB as well. Big thing is not taking somebody's runts which in the spring would be WAE less than 9-10" or SMB much less than 5-6". The idea is to promote forage period. By letting the FHM propagate all summer you have many, many hatches of differing sizes filling the forage "box", which you want as full as possible when predators are introduced for best growth. FHM introduced in the Midwest by May 1 should be spawning fairly quickly and every viable female will be laying eggs every 5-20 days. There will be new FHM hatching every day through the end of September. A full summer of this and you have a pretty decent amount of forage so stocking predators in fall is the earliest I would consider. If I had it to do over, I would have waited until the second fall for predators in mine but it's over and done. I "think" I would max my SMB at 25 seeing what I have in my 5/8ac pond, maybe 12-15 WAE. I might add that I think the WAE will have an advantage over other fish as they can and will continue to forage in the dark when the target is more likely to be at a resting-staging position for the night.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 01/22/2008:02 PM. Reason: added: in the spring
