I just wanted to add a quick edit; I'm looking at 50 Redears, 50 Channel Cats, and maybe 50 Rainbow trout for 1/2 acre. I know the recommended rate for Crappie/Perch is 300 per acre. So 75-150 Crappie/Perch sounds more reasonable, the soil is probably infertile but we'll be getting a test before too long.

And considering the results I had on a 4 acre lake, keeping numbers down in a 1/2 acre pond should be easy. I'm more concerned that the pond won't produce enough meat to make any difference. One meal a week would be real nice, but that's 2lbs of meat, 4+lbs of fish for the whole family. If we harvest all the fish above 6" that might help keep the pressure off the minnows. I'm even more unsure of a good food base for yellow perch that won't get eliminated from the pond. I suppose plenty of thick cover would help but then we'll have more snags :P.

Thanks to KG4KBU for pointing out that yellow perch are in fact legal in Kentucky. I've been partial to yellow perch as an alternative to crappie. Regular spawns might help but they have smaller mouths so shad won't work at all.

I read some of the newer crappie threads including Docfish's 3/4 acre crappie pond and reread ML's crappie thread. I'll probably look at the yellow perch threads before I call it a night. I already know of the small YP/SMB pond experiment in NY, I think I'll check that one first. It's been a long time since I posted, I still had my old signature.

-Allch Chcar
Living the dream, 21 acres. No pond, yet.