Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Forage Base

I'm preparing to begin stocking my new 2 ac. pond, pond was full last october, how many pounds of fatheads will I need to get my forage base started??Do you guys think i should add any other types?? when should I start?? Goal for this pond is to have quality hy.BG,possibly 50-50 lmb. smb. preadators...Origanally wanted crappies also, but sounds like a bad move from all that I've read here...what do you guys think???

How fast are you going to add other fish? If you're waiting long enough for the FHM to breed some (water temp over 60 deg, IIRC) 10 lbs should be plenty.

Are you emphasizing (H)BG or the bass - if the latter, strongly consider regular BG. LMB and/or SMB would wipe out a pond stuffed full of Fatheads in 1 to 2 years. With HBG, that leaves virtually no forage base.

Be aware SMB will undoubtedly be outcompeted by LMB and will pretty much disappear in 5-10 years unless restocked (with replacements large enough to escape predation). See Dr. Dave Willis' article in PB Mag, oh, 2-3 issues ago.

Theo, I was thinking of adding the bass-bg. late summer early fall so the fats would have time to reproduce...I'm really undecided about what other types of fish to stock and am open to suggestions and input from all the experts. I think that my pond has plenty of structure, several humps, brush piles,large sandstone etc. goal for the pond is diversity and balance with emphasis on the large bg...thanks for your response.

Theo pretty well said it all. Without BG, you have very little chance of sustaining a bass population.

Welcome to the PB Forum. Tell us your plan wrt management. Will you take out lots of fish , if so how many and what types? Will you be there every day, once a week, once a mth ? Will you be feeding pellets? Do you intend to re-stock or have a put-and -take fishery (usually CC and or HBG and or HSB with feeding)? We have several very good threads on ponds your size and location where we go through the entire process with many fish types. Once you decide how intense your management will be I can find them for you to read and think about. Here is one pond example :

http://www.pondboss.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=5;t=000510;p=1

http://www.pondboss.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=7;t=000390;p=1