The primary goal, as of right now, would be to have a nice BG fishery. Lots of them with good size. A close second would be walleye.
First off, all my ideas are just ideas, but here is my plan and reasoning.
Has anyone ever stocked daphnia magna or hexogenia (wigglers) in their pond? Both of them are readily available and could provide a serious adition to the food chain.
The idea is to have two mostly seperated food chains. One for the open water/benthic zones- bugs/ suckers/ walleye (4 muskies) and one for the shallow weedbeds bugs/BG/Bass. Walleyes and BG would be harvested as they reached table size.
The Tiger muskies would be stocked later to eat suckers in the +16" range. It would probably be less than 4. Also remeber that suckers have soft fins unlike walleye and bass. We plan on having the pond bass heavy anyway because BG are going to be harvested as pan fish, so if they ate some LMB it might be a good thing.
The suckers would be stocked dense enough to provide forage for the walleye. If the muskie/sucker idea won't work out as planned (quiet possible) what would be recomended for walleye forage?
The pond should have enough deep and open structure for the walleyes to evade the bass. If the walleyes do not need to compete with bass in the weedbeds for BG then I think they would have a good chance. Also if walleye are to be stocked some effort will be made to provide them the neccesary spawning habitat. Sand bars and rocky shoreline can be made, we have more than a few boulders. It is unlikely that we would restock 6" walleyes every other year, for the reasons you stated above.
The reason SMB are not being considered is because BG are the number one priority, we would rather have LMB/walleye than LMB/SMB.
What about yellow perch and no muskies or suckers? Will walleye grow at all if the only forage is BG? Is a yellow perch/walleye lake possible? What kind of stocking rates would be used?
Thanks for your input. I take all input and suggestions very seriously, seeing as I have never done this before!
