Ty -- I can address a couple of your questions. I'll leave the other questions for Bill and Norm.
"What about Red Ears? can I get them in southern MN? I know they eat snails and don't over populate." We used to "know" that redear sunfish were a southern fish species. However, there are some reasonable populations in Michigan, as we have previously discussed on this Forum. Maybe you could find a fish dealer in Michigan who might have some? I'm not sure. I do believe the "fact" that redears do not overpopulate. So, they are like the pumpkinseed in that they eat snails, but unlike pumpkinseeds in that the punkies definitely will overpopulate.
"To stock walleyes or not? What about stocking walleye fry or fingerlings with the bluegill fingerlings? and then stocking LMB a year later?" My best, and pretty strong, advice is to get the LMB stocked as soon as possible! I'm certain that the LMB will NOT reproduce until age 2 in your pond, so that knocks out a lot of the southern pond stocking strategies (they expect the LMB to spawn at age 1, producing a new cohort of small predators). I don't want to make this too complicated, but I wouldn't mind seeing you stock LMB fingerlings at perhaps 50/acre, along with fathead minnows to help the bass growth rates, and maybe even move in some adult bass the same year. That way the adults would spawn the next spring, and you'd get a year-class to stay with all the bluegill reproduction (because the bluegills more than likely WILL mature and spawn at age 1). Some people attempt a second fingerling LMB stocking the second spring instead of fooling with adults. These fish will be vulnerable to predatation, so perhaps bump the rate up to 100/acre?
So, you asked the walleye stocking question, and I took you to LMB! :-) Back to your walleye stocking question. If I were buying them, I would have more confidence that stocking 50-100/acre of small fingerlings (2 inchers) would succeed than would the fry stocking. Walleye fry typically are stocked at 3-5 days of age, and waters often are cold and zooplankton not too developed at the time that the fry are available for sale. If you do go with fry, stock a minimum of 1,000 fry per acre of water.
Hope this helps, and I'll look forward to other responses.
Dave
