Hi,

this is my first post, i have enjoyed reading here as i love fishing and am a scientist by profession and enjoy the learning.

i live in a neighborhood that owns/shares a large lakefront park. in that park is a small pond which was created in the 1910's when a local company used to mine marl in the lake nearby and they dug a test hole to see if the spot which became our park might become the next mine. It did not.

i would like to put some catfish in that pond for the kids to play catch and release with and wonder if it would work out?

here is what i can tell you about what's in there now:

Bluegill, well really a collection of bluegill, sunfish, and redear from little guys that i see in the weeds near shore to eating size 7" & up.

crappie, we have caught crappie, both white and black of around 6"

large mouth bass, two year ago one neighbor was fishing the pond for bluegill fairly regular and took out a 3.5 pound bass, i had previously seen a spawning bed in the spring i have not seen one since, perhaps this was the only one??

i also caught a 12" northern pike in there once when i was a kid and snuck in to fish the pond sometime around 1973. may not be relevant any more but i put it back in.

the pond is about 1/8 acre has a 10' wide strip of shallow water on the long side(150') and steep banks the rest of the way around. the depth is at least 10 feet, but i would have to drop in a boat and take some readings to know for sure. when standing along the steep side you can see to a depth of 6 or 7 feet, and the water is a bit tannic colored.

this pond is fed by a spring and has a small outflow into the lake, the outflow is about 10" wide and less than 1" deep.

no one is currently fishing there on a regular basis, most of the neighbors ignore the pond but one neighbor said he would split the cost of some fish to stock it so that our kids could all fish there a little more. i do not think we are interested in feeding at this point. though the kids might enjoy feeding the fish so i won't rule that out.

thanks for any input.

cheers
jerry