Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Initial stock strategy

Okay, I have a 1.25 acre pond...stocked with 600 bg, 200 redear,
50 channel cats, several thousand fatheads (not sure exact amt)..in May 08...have fed aggressively...stocked 50 3-5" lmb first of Sep 08 along with 700 golden shiners....bg are now around 6-8 inches with multiple smaller sizes ..due to drought here I rescued 10 lmg 14-15 inches from friends pond last week and placed them in my pond...I am looking for a pond that has a good number of lmb, not trophy size, just so you can have a good catch rate..question is...How many more lmb can I stock and what sizes do you recommend this spring? Also, I can probably get up to 10 more largemouth bass of the 10-15 inch size...suggestions on stocking ratio please..thanks..

If you were sticking with 3"-5" LMB, I'd say put in another 50 or so.

The presence of the larger 10"-15" LMB complicates things. Since LMB prefer BG 1/3 to 1/4 their own body length, your original BG stockers, now 6"-8", should be safe (hopefully the RES as well). So what can those 10"-15" LMB eat? The GSH AND the smaller LMB would probably slide down quite nicely for them.

Additional Shiners might help fend off predation on the small LMB. I would avoid the transfer of any more advanced LMB, and carefully observe your LMB population next year. If the adults you transferred pull off a spawn (quite likely, IMHO), let the bass population ride and see how it goes.

P.S. A lot of us would have rescued the adult bass under these circumstances as well.

Surveys with bait traps shows excellent bg spawns..I have bg of all sizes, so I figured the forage base of the smaller bg was fine..I was impressed with the bg growth..I am still feeding and fish are taking feed well...will consider additional gsh this spring...