Monty, there are a number of species that can be found wild in LA that are good pond candidates as forage... With that being said, please keep in mind the inherent risks of catching forage from the wild and placing it in your pond. Disease, parasites, improper ID leading to unwanted fish, hitchhikers like unwanted molluscs or aquatic plants, etc... There are a couple of threads that talk about this. Many people are still willing to go the wild route taking those risks into account and there are things you can do to mitigate them. With that said, here is a list of species found in south Louisiana that could make good forage fish in a pond:
golden shiner
red shiner
lake chubsucker
tadpole madtom
blackstripe topminnow
golden topminnow
western starhead topminnow
least killifish
sailfin molly
mosquitofish/gambusia
bantam sunfish
orangespotted sunfish
swamp darter
I don't have personal experience with many of these species because they are too far south and won't survive colder waters or are not found in my area for me to collect. However, based on their habitat preference and biology, I feel they would be suitable as forage fish because of certain characteristics(able to survive and reproduce in a pond, are sizes suitable to serve as forage, won't be detrimental to game fishes, etc).
If you just wanna see what's out there and are unsure what you've caught, take some good photos and post them on here. We'll help you out with IDing the catch.
