I think 48 smallies in a 1/3 ac pond are too many. They will quickly over eat the food source unless you are using BG or another similar forage speices that requires a stronger predatory pressure. To keep smallies growing fast it is best to always have ample food available (for more info on this see Nov-Dec09 PBoss mag). If you are not using BG I suggest you reduce the total stocked initially to 20-30 which equates to 60-90 per acre. IMO if you are looking to grow trophy smallies and getting them big fairly fast, 90/ac is still a little on the high density side of numbers. Your first SMB spawn will result in capacity smallies for this pond. Greg Grimes had a very good presentation at the PB III Convention about this topic: "Stocking 10X Forage and Low density LMB". IMO His principles also apply to smallies.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 09/28/09 08:59 PM.
