Good evening all,

So here's the run down. I have been on here for the last couple months just kind of absorbing information and have ultimately become determined to have my own pond. My fiance and I are contemplating moving to Iowa, from Virginia and she wants to start a vineyard and we are seeking land there. I told her that I would like to have a fishing pond if we are going to be investing in land anyways. My dream pond would have GSH, FHM, YP, GSF as the forage fish and hopefully get some YP and GSF big enough to eat. I would like to have SMB, WE and HSB as the predators as they would be the most fun to catch, I figure I can get some recruitment of the SMB and then the WE and HSB will be a put and take thing. I would like to harvest all the predators for eating, maybe 2-4 lbs of fish a week max. What I really want is 1 fish per 10 hours of fishing that will pretty much rip the pole out of your hand, 1 fish every 2 hours that will put up a heck of a fight and then 1 fish and hour that would be fun to catch and possibly harvest-able in size. The YP and GSF would be fished for using light tackle and it would be fun for me to catch and the kids we will have in a few years. I would like to get 8 inch GSF 12 inch YP for eating, and the WE, SMB would be 16", 3+ lbs for eating. I don't know how big HSB are for eating but everything I have read on here says they are a ton of fun to catch. My question is how big of a pond, how deep of a pond would I need to do this and will central to northeast Iowa be a feasible location for this goal? Depending on what we end up spending on the land, feeding to start with would be possible, but I would like it to be self sustaining after the first 2 years, aeration will be doable absolutely. The other question I had is would it cost a ton of money to build a pond like this from scratch and what would be the cheapest way to make a pond like this if we wanted to build it from scratch? Would I be better off searching for a spring fed stream and build a pond from that? Most of the land in Iowa has clay in it from what I understand. SOOOOOOOOOO I know that was a ton of questions, but since we are going to be searching for land over the next couple months I figured this was a great time to do some research. I have been dreaming since I started reading on here of my fiance saying, "I want some walleye tonight" and I can go out to the yard and pull in a WE or two for dinner.

Thanks all! KRS