Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose LMB & yellow perch bad mix????

Dr. Willis gives good advice. And his advice is based on quite a bit of experience with the fish that he talks about. He doesn't guess when he provides advice. I will briefly discuss some of my experiences with the fishes you are interested in. Sometimes my advice seems to conflict with his but it really doesn't. The ponds I work with are small ponds (mostly less than 3/4 ac) whereas he often but not always works on larger more compex bodies of water. Lots of complex interactive things affect how fish "behave" in ponds.

All the ponds that are near me and have LMB and perch together with low amounts weed growth basically have few if any perch. Perch that are present, are large (10+"). Few if any small perch are present. Especially if bass longer than 14" are present. When few small perch are present not many or no perch replace perch mortality or harvest. It becomes a bass dominated pond.

SMbass work better for smaller weed-free ponds around here with perch. Smallies have smaller mouths and are not able to eat as big as perch as a LMbass of same size. Even then if the SMbass are not harvested and allowed to get numerous and bigger than 14" then low numbers of perch result. Esp if bigger perch are harvested. For a small pond to really succceed with SMbass and perch it also needs quite a bit of cover and a minmow forage. SMbass will quickly eliminate minnows if minimal cover is present. It also helps if the the fish are fed pellets. This relieves some of the predation pressure in the pond.

A 12" to 13" bass is easily eating 3 - 5 lbs of forage fish per year this amounts to 50 to 80 4"-5" perch annually. This is a lot of fish to be losing to each medium sized bass per year. Ten bass are then eating abt. 500 - 800 medium sized perch per year. This is a big loss of the perch numbers in a small 1/4 -1/3 ac pond. And I was only talking about 10 bass!

The benefit to walleyes in your little pond is they won't spawn. Now you have control on how many predators in your pond. Too many take some out, too few add some. Harvest some; add some.

Small ponds like yours around me have the best success with perch, when they only stock perch and minnows and then feed the perch high protein pellets. No predators except the large perch. I am doing some testing now as to how big of a perch a perch will eat. I think that 11" -12" perch if present will eat and help control quite a few 3"-4" perch. In a small pond like yours it is easy to manually thin out (wire trap trapping and worm & small hook fishing) enough smaller perch (2.5" -6") perch that overpopulation is not a problem. Especially if you keep the weeds thinned out in the pond which should not be hard to do in a 1/10 to 1/4 acre.

Perch and hybrid striped bass also have seemed to work good so far in a few ponds around me that have these to species. Again this predator will not spawn for you and you now have good control of how many are in the pond. NOt like LMbass and SMbass who are annually adding more hungry predators to the fish community. They can easily become too abundant just like perch without proper management.

If you think you need larger medium sized fish for the kids to catch and release, I like the idea of using only male or female SM bass in a pond like yours. Choosing only male or female bass will be the problem. As I know it this is risky business and not real reliable. The fish would have to be taken during spawn season which is illegal in many SMbass states. You may be able to buy adult SMbass same sex from Hickling's Hatchery in NY state. single sex smallies will grow, not reproduce and you have control of their numbers. Your small pond will only support a few (6-10) naturally fed predators anyway. 10 bass amounts to 100 bass per acre in your case. This is a real high bass density.

No real definative answers from me but the LMbass perch combination would be my last choice and if I used it I would harvest every bass longer than 10".

My first choice in your situation would be perch only and use pellet raised perch. Perch would easily get to 13" and if not removed first would esily grow to 14". 12" and 13" perch have got to be eating some smaller fish and with some occsssional thinning of 3" to 5" perch and you have a great perch fishery pond. 13" perch are really fun to catch and perch are always willing to bite and also produce a great bite for ice fishing.