T-rider, Several initial comments.
1. It is a good idea to talk to the neighbor about his small pond connected to the marsh. Although don't be suprised if he says bluegills. Many, many people call all sorts of sunfish and their hybrids - bluegills. Consider yourself lucky if green sunfish are not in the marsh-pond.
2. I highly recommend that you get yourself a fish - minnow trap this winter or spring. After ice out and when water gets to 50F-55F, use some dark colored spray paint to give it a light paint coating to dull the shiny finish of the wire mesh. NOTE: I've found the black rubber coated minnow traps are not very good at collecting fish compared to bare wire mesh traps. Put some bread in the trap set parallel to shore in 12"-18" of water. Set trap in marsh and after a few days in the neighbor's small pond for a few days to check fish in both areas. Maybe the neighbor can run the trap, photo the fish for you or just hold the fish in a bucket for your next trip to the pond. Photograph each type of fish and post photos here or email them to me. The fish can be accurately identified. Note, we need close photos of the fish. Proper identification will help with the stocking plan.
3. Since you are in MI and at this tenative early point, I suggest you research the fish combination of starting with minnows/shiners & yellow perch in spring. In fall add SMB fingerlings. NOTE SMB fingerlings are often difficult to reliably locate each year due to poor spawns of SMB at certain hatcheries. Start your search early and reserve or order SMB early for the fall pickup with the hatchery. IT will be much easier to convert your pond fishery from a YP-SMB combination to a bgill-LMB combination than the other way around; BG-LMB to a YP-SMB.
Since your pond is fairly small, I think a very good plan would be to start with the YP-SMB stocking combo, and then at ANY POINT IN TIME, add a few male bgill for panfish variety. Condello, Baird & myself wrote three very informative articles in Pond Boss Magazine (Mar-Apr, May-Jun, Jul-Aug 2006) about using only male bgills in ponds (back issues available from PBoss forum home page). The articles would be very good reading for you and your application if you use the YP-SMB combo. A total of 40-100 just male BG (8"-11") in our pond would provide some extra good panfishing of very big bgill, IF THE POND DOES NOT ALREADY HAVE ANY BGILL IN IT. Any existing sunfish would likely breed with male bgill complicating the fishery. The bgill and other panfish would perform best when you live at the pond and feed them pellets on a regular basis.
4. Once your fishery becomes mature (3-5yrs) you could add 2-3 northern pike. BUT be VERY AWARE that the 2-3 pike when 24"-30" long could have a huge impact on your intermediate bass and large perch numbers. Those 2-3 pike will be cropping off lots of 9"-12" perch and bass that are available in a small pond. With the 3-5 lb pike present you will see or catch relative few intermediate sized bass and only the occassional large dandy perch. From experience pike will be eating those fish. With pike abscent bass and larger perch fishing will be very good. The choice is yours. I think that is a very big sacrifice to make for an occassional pike catch. Myself, I prefer to commonly catch big perch (11"-14") and 10"-14" bass and then occasionally eat them as opposed to continually feeding one or two pike. My older 3/4 acre pond always had very few 9"-13" LMB when a large pike was present.
5. Compared to the fun and action of 1 or 2 pike, I think your family will be a lot happier with much more hard fish pole pulling action if you stock 10-20 hybrid striped bass (HSB) instead of 1-3 pike. These fish have a small mouth which forces then to eat smaller fish compared to a LMB or pike. The HSB mouth is similar sized to that of a SMB of equal size. If the HSB are fed pellets, they eat fewer fish yet still grow fast. With feeding, expect HSB to easily grow to 24"-28" in SE MI. HSB can be added almost any time whenever just YP-SMB are present.
A few pond owners in my area have just YP-HSB combos that work very well. HSB fight longer and pull harder than the same sized SMB.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 12/15/07 07:43 PM.
