Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose time of year for stocking BG, RES, FH

Here, here! A lot of us do that - learn from the mistakes of the first pond and correct on the second - but how many realize and plan for it ahead of time?

The problem with Summer stocking, especially commercial stocking, is that it's hot and sunny. IMHO most fish stockers don't load up the truck with one pond's worth of fish and drive straight to that pond - they load up the truck full of as many fish as they can deliver that day, hopefully (for them) on a more or less circular route that lets them get fish to your pond and a number of others in a time- and fuel-efficient manner.

So your fish may be on the truck all day; I would think an average load of fish is on the truck a half a day. And the whole time they are on the truck, they are warming up. In July and August (and, farther South, the juxtaposed months), the fish just get too darn hot for most of them to survive the trip.

Fear not - your presumably (safely so, I should think, stuck inside during a West Pennsyltuckio rainstorm) water-filled pond is also filling with life, as the volunteer plankton and invertebrate food chain, upon which those BG, RES, and FHM will someday depend, establishes itself for you. So when you do stock those forage base fingerlings, be it this Fall or next Spring, they will have enough to eat to grow rapidly and spawn better.

I recommend forage fish this Fall or next Spring, LMB Fall 2008 or Spring 2008. Patience is another thing we have to learn with our first pond.