Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose gizzard shad or golden shiners

I live up here in Northeast Indiana, and am putting in a pond soon. I know that i can't stock threadfin shad up here because of the climate, so i am pretty much stuck with either gizzard shad or golden shiners. Which one would you guys suggest i stock as an additional source of forage. thanks

big bass, you have to consider the size of the pond. if it is realitivley small 1-3 acres you will want to use shiner but they will eat buegill eggs. on the other hand, gizard shd will overpopulate a small lake very quickly.

Bluegills especially when crowded, will also eat bluegill eggs, infact bgill probably eat more bgill and bass eggs than golden shiners.

I would not recomend gizzard shad for the inital stocking of ANY bass pond. The shad will grow far quicker than the bass and will get out of controll in a hury. In Bob Lusk's book "Raising Trophy Bass" he says that you need alot of big bass to be able to handle gizzards, more specificly at least 25% of them must be 16" or more.
Shiners on the other hand probly work best when part of the inital stocking because it is difficult to stock them and get a good population going once adult bass are already present. I have heard many of the experts on this site say that one of the keys to growing big bass is deviersifying the food chain and shiners should do well to serve that purpose.
Mabie in a few years, when your bass are ready, you could consider the gizzard shad.

-Scott

Can Gizzard shad be controlled by electroshocking and removing the larger specimens, or is that not practical because they are more pelagic and so numerous?

Removing adult gizzard shad is not efficient and difficult. They are very prolific. Electroshocking is not real effective in deeper open water where the shad frequently hang out.

If you are really interested in growing numerous larger bass in northern IN consider the pellet feeding method. Can someone provide a picture for BigBassMan of the larger pellet feed bass? Do your homework and I think if you use the pellet feeding method and do it correctly you will be very satisfied with the results in a pond 5 acres or less. Since this is an old topic I wonder how things turned out for BigBassMan and if he even built a pond??

Good question. I hope he sees this and responds. His last post was 5/20/2011

I think in Northern Lakes GS get too big for the LMB to prey on them. (or our Northern LMB don't get big enough to utilize the adults as food)

To big for LMB.