What are the sizes of the two ponds, David? One big consideration: if neither pond is going to be larger than an acre or two, you'd have a much better chance at achieving a trophy bass fishery with one larger pond of three or four or more acres than you would with a smaller pond. Big bass need lots and lots of forage, and it's generally held that a pond of an acre or less isn't going to be able to produce more than one trophy bass.
So the biggest question that needs to be addressed, both in deciding whether to keep multiple ponds or make one and in deciding what numbers to stock, is what fish is your top priority? If it's trophy bass, you're going to have a much better chance of achieving your goal with one big pond. And stocking numbers will be higher on the bluegill than any you've been told: 1250 bluegill per acre would be a good minimum if big bass are the goal, and you could go as high as 2000 where you live as bass in the Deep South (I don't know if northern TX qualifies, though I'm guessing it probably does) seem to eat through more forage and more quickly (probably due to a longer growing season) than elsewhere. You would also want to stock additional forage species such as threadfin shad and golden shiners, and after two or three years when your bass are starting to put on some size, gizzard shad to give them bigger mouthfuls and get them really huge. Crayfish could also be good to stock and have been shown to make a difference in growing trophy bass. Numbers-wise on bass you would want to go lower than what most hatcheries advise, about forty per acre; I would go with 20 F-1 bass, 10 Florida, and 10 northern-strain per acre.
If on the other hand trophy bluegill are your main focus, you'll want to go with lower numbers than any you've been told: I would recommend no more than 250 CNBG (coppernose bluegill) per acre and 200 shellcracker (higher numbers ratio-wise of shellcracker because they will get very big in a southern BOW). You would want higher numbers of bass, at least 100 per acre. And you would want to skip other forage species (TS, GSH, GS) because they'll compete directly with the bluegill for food and drastically lessen their growth. You would want to install at least a couple automatic feeders, roughly one per acre or two acres depending on your budget. And, if bluegill are the focus, don't wait to stock the bass - stock them now with the bluegill so the bluegill don't have the opportunity to get in a spawn next spring with no predation. One good spawn can overpopulate a pond with bluegill, which is good from a big-bass standpoint but disaster if big bluegill are the goal.
With either plan, you'll want to fertilize to maximize the food chain. And, most serious pondmeisters nowadays use automatic feeders even if bass are the priority because the bluegill produce more offspring due to having a better food source, and reach intermediate sizes that give bass bigger bites, more quickly.
