Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Stocking my 1/2 Acre pond

Hello
I have a 1/2 acre pond that is 6 to 8 feet deep over 50% of the area and 3 to 4 feet over the remaining area.
I dug the pond to generate fill for the construction of my home. It is filled with groung water table and stays full year round
I drops a 3 feet in the late summer.
not knowing what I was doing a put 12-15 1 lb bass in the pond 1 year and 1/2 ago. They are still there, however the eat all the baby fish because they have no food. From Reading Basic Pond Management it sounds like I cannot have bass in this small area. Is there any way I can have a bass population that will grow and not need to be fed. If so what should I add for bait fish and how much. Any help would be much appreciated.
Ed

Yes, you can do it. You just have to somehow build and maintain a forage base. That usually means bluegills and continually catching out all of the bass progeny. They are real bad about overspawning and thus overeating everything. I know of a guy with a 1/4 to 1/2 acre pond with a bunch of big bass. He catches them from area lakes and brings them home. However, he tosses in several pounds of fatheads every week or so. He figures it costs him about $600 per year to have a backyard fishin hole with big bass. I had a very small pond, about 30' x 30' that I tossed some 2 to 3 lb. bass into. They quickly ate everything in it and I continously had to trap perch from my creek. They could clean out 50 one to 5 inch bluegills and green sunfish in a day. Texas summer finally dried up the hole and I wasn't real sad. It was lots of work.

Welcome Ed, you are going to have to get adult BG that the bass won't eat as fast as you put them in. I have a .4 acre pond and have bass bg and catfish. I also have a large amount of fatheads and shiners in it you can almost walk on them when I feed the cats but I put them in 2 years before the bass so they spawned several times. Same thing with the bg gave them 2 years before the bass went in and have several areas of pea gravel for them to spawn in. Now if I can only keep the great blue heron away chase one off every morning watched him get a 4 inch bg this morning when I was brushing my teeth!

Bob

Ed,

I agree with both of the above. Get some adult BG in there as soon as you can.

Bob,

I wish I had your patience, I really do. Waiting 2 years is just more than I can stand. I stocked some F1s in a new pond a month ago and I already want to go try to catch them. Patience, patience.

I did my initial stocking in the late fall with 50 adult BG and 2 pounds of fatheads about 2 months after the pond was dug and then over the winter everytime I came home from crappie fishing I just tossed the remaining minnows either shiners or tuffies into the pond. In late Febuary I stocked 200 channel cats pretty heavy stocking but I knew come fall we would catch lots of them out and freeze for the winter so we had most of late summer fall and then the following year to catch catfish before the bass went in the spring of last year. We catch a few bass mostly by accident as I have not been targeting them but the girls will get one on worms and they are about 1-2 pounds and very fat compared to length.

Bob