Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Which is the best forage here?

I have a 1.5 acre clear pond. It is about 15 feet deep in the middle, in the summer it acquires a five foot ring of vegetation, since it is deep in the middle it just developes a ring. Now I have some 9 to 14 inch bass around 30 of them if lucky, they spawned this last year and I could see hundreds, I`m not sure if many made it. The pond also has many large green perch , not sure how many but one can usually catch one on a small plastic worm, just like the bass. ----now my question is what is the best forage combination I can stock in this pond to insure that MY BASS eat well? Any advive on adding bluegill, coppernose, red ear, or pumpkinseed, to this mix to keep them fat and eating well!!!----Please help!!!!

Adding Bluegill would be your best bet. This combination should do very well. I believe you can stock 5-bg for every 1-lmb.( someone please correct me if I'm wrong!!) In addition , minnows and shiners were recommended for my pond.

A 10lb bass needs to eat 5lbs of BG to maintain weight and needs to eat 5lbs more to gain 1lb. (I learned that at PondBoss )

I am guessing that this relationship is mostly linear for sexualy mature bass. You could also figure that fish should eat 2%-3% of thier body wieght a day for maximum growth. (That is the general feeding suggestion for aquaculture)

But, the number of BG or Green sunfish in your pond doesn't depend on the number of bass but rather the productivity of the pond. The greener the water the more productive the pond, the algae = more zooplankton = more sunfish = more bass. One way to figure out how many pounds of bass you can have is to figure out how many pounds of pytoplankton you have. Figure that 99% of the mass is lost every time its eaten.
1,000lbs of algae x 1% = 10lbs Zooplankton
10lbs Zooplankton x 1% = .1lb Sunfish
.1LB sunfish x 1% = .001Lb Bass production

You can add to this process by feeding your BG or fertalizing your pond.
I would stock BG or Tilapia (those eat lower on the food chain than sunfish) if leagal. I would go with adult BG seeing as you have an established bass population. And I would go fairly dense, if you don't care about cathcing BG. Good luck.

My advice is to catch and fry all the sunfish you can, while adding some adult bluegill. The sunfish are competing with your bass for forage.