Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Help me adopt my fish family

I do believe you can have a good bit of diversity in a 5.5 acre pond. However, I would start by establishing some kind of ecosystem, and then if, down the line, you want to add some bonus fish here or there, it's an option.

If it was my pond, I would go with Fatheads, Golden Shiners, Yellow Perch, SMB, and HSB.

I would not introduce them all at one time; instead, I would phase them in over different time spans.

For instance, you can easily get larger HSB (8" up to 16" plus) for stocking whenever you want, so I would let YP and SMB get to 10" plus sizes before I put in HSB.

I would put fatheads and YP in this spring (I would have already put fatheads in....sorry, had to say it for burger).

Then depending on the availability of SMB, I might put them in Fall '07. The smallies don't grow as fast as LMB (or HSB), so exisiting forage fish have time to get bigger even with 5-6" SMB around.

Once the smallies were 8", maybe 9-10", I would start to load up on Golden Shiners in the 5" plus range. Again, these are easily available.

I would give the Golden Shiners about 6 months to grow, and then I'd put in some larger HSB stockers. Or bump up the HSB stocking, but go with smaller stockers like 6-8".

Anywhere down the line, you could add a few channel cats just for a surprise fish, or even a few walleye.

Keep in mind, I've added 30-40 Channel cats to my pond over the last few years, and I've never seen a single one since. The last three I stocked where 26" long each, and albino to boot. Never saw them again.