Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose new 2ac.+ pond

Hello everyone, new subscriber here,I would like your input on stocking rates for my new pond. I'm thinking about black crappie, smb, hybird bluegill,maybe lmb, or hsb.My new pond is app. 16' deep at the dam,have constructed a long hump on each side of pond with broken concrete,large sandstone on top,water will be 6' or so deep over these humps.. large brush pile of hedge apple in center of pond,at a depth of 12', pile is probably 8'-10' in height.I have several rock piles that will be in the 4'-8' depth,pond is filling fast,as my runoff area is estimated at around 70 ac.several springs are contributing as well.The bottem is a clay-sandy type mixture.Will smallmouth spawn in this type environment?Do ineed to place rocky material in the 4'-8' depth? Will it be a sucessful black crappie impoundment?As you can tell I have many questions,I would greatly appreciate your thoughts-input...Thank you for any advice

Buckeye, welcome to PB. It sounds like a neat water hole that you have put a lot of thought into. Most Pro's are divided regarding crappie in less than 25+ acres. About half consider them an unwise decision. The remainder consider them an outright disaster. You can do it but may have to suck the water out and start over.

BTW, I see a lot of thought going into predators but none about prey/forage. That and water quality should be your biggest concerns and considerations during the first year. Most of us start out that way. I did. It's sort of like ranching. The best Rancher is the one who considers himself a grass(prey) farmer and the cattle(predator) as a device to utilize the grass.


You can and should read a lot about stocking mixes here. I would also subscribe to the PB Mag and buy Lusks book "Raising Trophy Bass". Those will be your cheapest investments.

Have fun and don't lie to your wife about the expenses. You're gonna get caught.

Howdy, BR. It's always good to hear from Cambridge, "The Gateway to Byesville!"

As DD mentioned, the forage base is the foundation for all your predator fish dreams. HBG would make a very poor foundation due to their low reproduction rate. Depending on what exact species of predators you finalize your plans on, you will want to use regular BG or perhaps (if you choose to go with SMB only, for example) YP. Plus those fabulous RES either way, IMHO.

Initial stocking with FHM, GSH (for a predator emphasis pond), and perhaps Gambusia will jump start your forage base and provide initial table fare for predator fish for 1 (FHM) to perhaps 3-4 (GSH) years.

Here is one of the best threads on SMB in ponds, SMB in Farm Pond , with info from the likes of Dr. Dave Willis and Bill Cody (the Dean of Ohio Pondmeisters). I have permanently stored the contents of this post for future SMB pond reference. My take on it is that it's probably worth a few tons of suitably sized aggregate placed at the correct depth range as SMB spawning insurance, but it may not be necessary.

There are a large number of posts arguing the pros and cons of Crappie in small ponds. Read as many of these as you can (learning to use the search function, if you haven't already, will help you find them). IIRC the best BCP ponds utilize overcrowded LMB as a predator, but I haven't read through the Crappie posts for a while. See for yourself what the collective Crappie experience and philosophy is, and join the arguments.

BuckeyeRanman, welcome. Good to see another Ohian on the site. Get your forage started, maybe some fatheads and standard bluegills, and order the books and magazine. It looks like your off to a good start. Is your main goal to have big black crappie or smallmouth bass?

WRT your question about SMB spawning material.

From a study in the Black Bass Symp. by AFS.

SMB nested in water .5 to 3 meters where the substrate contained nest material where at least 40% of the particles were 6.4 to 149 mm in dia. ( .25 to 5.9 inches in dia.).

Here is a typical pic.

Buckeye - I agree with the comments from Theo about rock. Even if your smallies don't "need" rock to spawn and recruit successfully, they like the rock habitat and it should be a good concentrating spot for your angling efforts. As others have hinted, I am worried about a smallmouth bass-black crappie pond. I strongly suspect that you will see overpopulated crappies in short order. Smallmouths are not nearly as effective predators as are largemouths.

As you have been advised, get your forage establised first (early spring 2007) and then add SMB next fall 2007 at the earliest. See this thread for sources of SMB in OH - order and reserve SMB early they sell out fast in the fall.

Get some stones-rocks like those in ewest's upper photo in soon and at a couple to several spots maybe 4-5 ft in dia about 2.5ft-4ft deep. SMB spawn most often in our local ponds utilizing stones golf-ball to baseball sized.

Utilize the searches to read & read some more about SMB, LMB and HSB. I think you can combine SMB with a few HSB (80%SMB-upto 20%HSB)and they will co-exist okay. However either chose SMB or LMB, but not both, for reasons you will read about in earlier posts.

As Dr. Willis says you will likely have stunting problems with crappie in a pond without LMB. Consider yellow perch instead of crappie. SMB can easier control their numbers. Helped a pondowner today harvest some YP from his 0.3 ac pond. We kept 30 YP 9.5"-14.5" long - 13of30 (43%)were greater then 13" long, 19of30(63%) were greater than 12" long and there were only 7 small throw backs - all from an amazing perch pond.

Bill,

Care to share the reason for the YP harvest. Was it the owners goal to harvest fish in a specific size class? Just curious.

Thank you folks for your input. My goals for this pond are primarily to have a nice black crappie fishery.I've been reading the posts on this forum for months,trying to decide on how many and what type of fish to stock,some say the black cr. are not a prolific spawner,etc.As bill cody advises,i intend to create a forage base of fathead minnows..would shellcrackers,be helpful as well? A couple of fish suppliers here say that you can stock predators, a 50-50 mix of lmb and smb, what do you think of that? The pond is almost full,and very muddy, could i begin to stock the forage base now, or should I wait 'til spring? Thank you once again for your advice,and i would like to hear from the pond experts on how many and what kind of fish to stock.

Most of the time, when LMB and SMB are both present (and assuming there is no supplemental stocking of either), the LMB will soon overtake the SMB. Several reasons come to mind:
1) LMB grow faster than SMB
2) LMB spawn much easier than SMB
3) LMB can eat more larger sizes of forage, and one main reason is mouth size

My limited opinion on Black Crappie is that if you want them, fine, but you have to understand them and have to actively manage towards that goal. Just throwing in some Black Crappie will mostly not result in a good BC fishery for several reasons.

Crappie are predators just like LMB and SMB. So assuming that you wanted a good Black Crappie fishery, you have to be able to effectively control the numbers of spawned Black Crappie, or be able to eliminate the "new" crappie.

One main way to do this would be to try an maintain some heavy base of other predator fish that would eat the young crappie.

But the Catch 22 is that those "other predator fish" would be competing for the same food as your target Black Crappie.

On a side note, I don't know if anyone has had success in pellet feed-training Black Crappie.

My comments are probably just the tip of the iceburg.

Buckeye here is a link to a list of PB threads on Crappie. I highly recommend that you take a look before you make a final decision on what to do and how to raise them if you go ahead. As you will see we do not have a final answer but a lot of possible ideas and the knowledge of the factors which will allow you the best chance to make it work. Welcome and good luck whatever you decide.

http://www.pondboss.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=5;t=000461;p=1#000001

Sunil in one of those threads Todd indicates that Inslee (?sp) has feed trained them.

And Buckeye, if you pursue a BC pond your approach and experiences will be valuable info here how regardless of whether you judge them successful or not.

The main concern for Buckeye is that his pond is 2 ac. A pond this size with an out of control crappie populaition will be much more diffciult and time consuming (expensive?) to fix the problem of overpopulatied stunted crappie COMPARED to a 1/4 - 3/4 ac pond. The small pond is much easier to start over.

Recent discussion has occurred regarding how soon to stock forage fish. Note however, the owner was from southern US - a longer growing season and warmer winter than OH.

From Archives - http://www.pondboss.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=22;t=000019


Since you are in OH, in our current specific situation with an unfull, turbid late fall pond, I prefer an early spring stocking of minnows-forage and maybe fingerlings - depending on the species. For an earlier built and full pond, my advice would be differnt.

Fish will no doubt live in your pond as it exists today, however, a Spring stocking will allow for: 1. more water in the pond (hopefully full), 2. water to be more clear with chemistries stabilized, and 3. more time to develop a good communities of phytoplankton-zooplankton food base for excellent condition factors for minnows. 4. Also in OH the minnows-shiners from hatcheries in spring usually are more mature (larger) and ready to "go" for the spawn season compared to those you will typically get in the fall. This philosophy is similar to the philosophy of first stocking forage fish to become established then add predators. Both philosophies involve a good or ample food base. They are just dealing on different food chain levels.

Russ - Firstly, understand this is a mature YP fishery in a small pond. Secondly note that I do not necessarily agree with this harvest philosophy. The owner, similar to numerous others in my area, almost always lose some of the largest and oldest YP during the hottest periods of the summer - depending on temperatures. Often this number can be as high as 20-30 individuals and it is mostly the biggest ones, depending on the situation. This particular owner just HATES to discard these prime fish as waste, due to heat related deaths. His main philosphy was to harvest a significant number of the largest perch before they die next summer and then let the younger perch fill the void. This is a very common and usually the standard philosophy in fish management.

The owner thinks he has a real good number of smaller perch avalable to fill the void. I am not positive of this theory based on the number or percentage of small YP that we caught while fishing. Note that we also harvested 3 walleye (WE) 16"-21" along with the YP. There were originally 10 walleye in this 0.33 ac pond. I suspect the numbers of small YP are "down" in this pond due to predation factors from the walleye and high percentage of large YP. Removing the WE and larger YP should help increase the numbers of small YP and minnows. The owner and I discussed the ramifications of removing these larger fish which could help or hinder small fish recruitment. We will keep an eye on the results.

Note - I have been actively helping manage this small pond since its inception in 1994. It is one of the first exclusive YP ponds that we produced in NW Ohio. As far as I know and besides mine, it is one of the very best YP fisheries in the whole region. Those 30 YP keepers, 8 throwbacks and 3 WE were caught in 70 minutes which included monkeying around with regular fishing duties and getting nets, photos, rebaiting, retying hooks, etc. I may put a profile of this pond on my list of articles for Pboss Mag. I have numerous photos of its history.


The pond owner prefers a fall harvest instead of a harvest when eggs masses are large (winter) or for a lengthy period after the spawn (Apr-Jun) when there seems to be less harvestable meat biomass per fish. Summer harvest of YP can result in off flavors &-or softer textured fillets.

Bill thanks and a few pics would be nice.

Hey Buckeye, Where are you from in the land of #1? I have a real nice fishery for you to call on. I have 75 black crappie in my 1.5 acre pond near Chillicothe. They are doing fine (5in when bought - 12in now - 3 years)along with all other types I have purchased including perch 25 of them. I am having 25lbs of fatheads coming within a week and I do this twice a year and feel this is a must to grow big fish. I also feed from a feeder twice a day. If you are in the area stop by.

Bill,

Thanks for the reply. So as not to sidetrack this thread, I sent you an email with another question about the YP pond.

ewest - I hesitate to supply photos. I am saving them for an article in PBoss Magazine. I will look and see if there is one I feel appropriate to post.