Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain would like to get this 1/2 acre pond going!

I can help confuse you. Just some quick thoughts based on ponds in your region.
No cats unless you plan to regularly catch them out and eat them. Otherwise I find they are pretty much not needed in a pond and usually become come a nuisance or novelity. I believe that each larger catfish takes the place of one bass. What would you rather have bass or catfish?. I prefer bass, more bass less catfish; many differ. You can have a mix of both but if you don't eat cats, why have them take up space when several extra bass MAY be more fun. Maybe not, it depends, you decide.

In rereading your intro question, you want a bass bgill pond. Then why stock cats?
If no cats, just leave the cats out, the 50 bass will probably, when the pond matures, end up being 12 to 20 larger bass and 10 to 30 bass less than 8". Depends on how you harvest & manage.

When to stock what species. It can be done either way. The purpose of adding bass later after bgill or fatheads is that one or both will have spawned and there will be scads of baby fish for the newly stocked bass to eat. Resultant bass growth will be more than twice as fast compared to stocking bass and bgill at the same time together.

If you add the bass after the bgill or fatheads spawn watch carefully that bgill do become over abundant in the first 3 yrs. Do not harvest any bass until the first stocked bass have had little ones that grew up and spawned and this spawn is catchable, usu 4 to 6 yrs after initial bass stocking. This helps promote successful bass spawns which control bgill numbers.

One half acre pond does not allow much bass harvest (1 maybe 2/yr). Primarily because you do not have many bass in there. Each bass you take out leaves behind about 5-8 lbs of uneaten bgill that would have been eaten if that bass was still there. So each bass harvest should include some harvested bgill.

The harvest method/techniques will determine what sizes of fish are in your pond. You manage that.

You have to stock based on your goals. Decide on your goals then stock and manage toward that goal. Have a goal then seek advice specific to that goal. There are many new midwestern, newbee nonfishing, pondowners. They have no well thought out plan or goal. This is primarily because they do not know all the options or choices or possibilities. Thus the State or others (hatcheries) have blanket or general stocking guidelines for a generalized fishery. But what if one wants a specialized fishery? Then throw those guidelines out, or maybe just modify them a bit with some experienced help that keeps "your goals" in the forefront.