Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Hello everybody:

Walt:

His two ponds are within 25 miles of me, and his soil type is very similar to mine. Some clay, with lots of very yellow sand, minimal organics in the sandy soil. His ponds are dug, groundwater ponds as well, and if like mine, they will see a lot of water flow underground, because they are dug into the water table. There is minimal clay in the area, and it would be too costly to truck enough in to correctly line the pond (s). This past summer, I saw at least two, more likely 3 distinct blooms, each lasting for a couple of weeks in my pond. (renovated, i.e. re-dug 90% of the bottom in summer 2008, went from 7' max to 22' max) I think it might be due to subterraneum water flow in/out of the pond.

My neighbor across the street has a dug, groundwater pond, dug 9-2008, probably 1/3 ac. Rex saw it, maybe he'll chime in on the size as well. My neighbor has 100 HBG 6", maybe a dozen LMB to 12", and 100 CC 14"-16" in the pond. He started aerating late Spring 2009, and once he got rid of the tame ducks he had, his clarity is 30" or so, with a pretty good FA problem. He hand feeds with generic floating catfish food from Tractor Supply by hand 1x day - close to 1 coffee can/day.

Point being, I think without fertilization, I think FRIZ won't be able to sustain a photoplankton bloom thick enough to keep water clarity between the magic numbers, and his fish producing capacity will suffer.

In regards to feeding, here's my experience in my pond.
I'm really not sure of how many BG are in my pond, after an almost 100% fish kill during the winter of 2003/2004, I stocked close to 1,000 6"-9" BG (90% or greater Males) in 2005 (before I knew about PB). Late in the summer of 2005, I found out that I shouldn't have stocked that many, and had friends come over for a serious weekend of fishing. We removed about half of them before winter set in. Now, like I said, keep in mind that those were 90% Males. How many BG are in the pond now? I did stock 100 6"-9" CC Spring of 2009, and there should be maybe 50 16+" CC from the previous year's stocking and 4 CC 25+". The pond is LMB lite, I only stocked a dozen between 14" and 16" in 2006, plus 4 more 12+" pellet trained LMB from Jones in Spring 2009. I have been stocking between 10-15## FHM and 10#-15# GSH 2x year. There is minimal cover in the pond, no weeds, 6 porcupine fish attractors 5' dia and a couple 10"-12" tall fruit trees. I've only removed 2 LMB, 50-80 BG between 7"-9" and as many CC as I could.

I'm saying this because of what I'm seeing when I feed. I have an ADF75, set to throw food for 1 to 3 seconds per feeding, 2 to 3 times a day, depending on the time of the year and water temp. I normally start/stop feeding when water temps are in the mid to low 50's - that's when the fish stop feeding. I've gone thru a total of 200# of AquaMax 500/600 this year feeding the BG/LMB/CC. I will adjust the amount of feed thrown so that there is minimal food floating on the water 15 minutes after the feeder stops throwing the food. I live on the property, and know that the feeder was working the whole feeding season. Am I using less feed due to low BG numbers, the BG having more natural food & are feeding less on the pellets, are they not feeding agressively because they weren't raised on pellets, or ??

I don't want to dilute FRIZ's thread, but I'm sorta trying to tie in my feeding scenario into his pond thread to get a handle on how much he actually would be feeding if he decides to feed. I rarely catch a BG less than 6" (pond record is 11"), and all the LMB that I'm catching are over 100 WR.