i'd vote for gams....they cant hurt anything as far as i reckon, and only do good things among them being forage.

lets throw in a little philosophy for folks to argue about........an after thought from my earlier post....brettski, you know already (with yer personality) you'll never be able to completely avoid fish mgmt, you are too hands on, that said.....my take on an essentially non-managed pond is that whatever you stock will evolve, you'll have a growth period with not much action, then a renaissance where everything is awesome, and then a decline into mediocrity. this process may span 5, 6, 7, maybe 8 years, longer in a larger pond.

as such, one approach may be to just stock whatever suits yer fancy. i doubt seriously one could stock the perfect way to almost completely eliminate the need for management and maintain a long term top of the line fishery.

at some point, say 9 or 10 years down the road, i'll bet you a dime corrective management will be a necessity to bring the pond back in balance no matter what was initially stocked. you WILL also have GSF at this time, and we can argue then whether or not the birds brought them \:\)

the above is (perhaps) an argument for putting BG in yer pond......personally, i just cant imagine a pond without BG \:D if they begin to overpopulate some, so what?.....if yer not concerned with condello sized trophys and would be happy, as many of us would, having abundant and consistent fishing action and pan ready fish in the 7 to 8-inch range....just imagine the fun. a 5 acre pond will grow some nice lepomis.

if your not too far north for RES, make sure you pepper in a lot of those too.

shoot me down \:D

GSF are people too!