Tropical storm Fay ended this experiment by introducing BG, WM, and Shiners to my pond, at least that's what I've found so far.

The WM came from my neighbor's upstream pond where I stocked them in spring 08. They apparently spawned very well because my pond is now loaded with WM from 1.5" to 6", but mostly in the 2-3" range.

The BG and Shiners came up from the creek. I sampled my pond for the first time yesterday and out of 6 or 7 dozen fish (mostly WM) I caught 3 BG and 3 Golden Shiners. The biggest shiner was 6".

Now that I have the BG and Shiners I need to get some large predators. I would love to add a small number of grass and chain pickerel as well as Florida or spotted gar.

I think I need to watch the WM because they will hit any yoy hard. I know LMB will control the WM, but I don't want a pond full of small bass.

I think the WM might do a good job of controlling the RES population under 2-3" for now and larger as the WM grow. I think the small WM should be fairly easy to control by angling and I pulled out several dozen yesterday.

I don't trust my scale very much, but here's a few photos from my first day fishing this pond:















Last edited by GW; 10/07/08 08:51 AM.