Ganggreen:

Welcome to the PB forum. Eric provided good info. Pond balance and carrying capacity involves understanding all the basic pond concepts including water quality , fish species and traits , survey or sampling methods (creel , seine , visual , electroshock etc) , and management and how all these and other factors fit together.

One example is you do not have to seine the whole pond to know how things are progressing. There are sample methods for this using a 20-30 ft. seine.

As a general rule a newly made and stocked pond is more productive and will move toward reaching carrying capacity in 2-3 years. A pond that is fertile and uses supplemental feeding can have much higher production but requires close attention to water quality. Carrying capacity can be millions of little fish or a hundred big ones or anywhere in between, but is usually expressed in lbs of fish per acre.

I will find a couple of recent SMB/YP/BG/FH pond threads and add them here.