Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain New .75 acre pond in Virginia, need help!

Catmandoo as well as a few others here have experience with Zetts WVA and there are not many complaints. Dave's comment about "3 lb bas starving on minnows" was ment for primarily for LMB not less regarding SMB, although larger smallies do much better on larger forage than primarily 3". IMO 4 lb SMB is equivalent to abt 6 lb LMB. The only way you will get the "bluntnose minnows/banded killifish/spotfin shiners/satinfin shiners/tesselated darters" is to contact CJBS in private messages or collect these fish from the local waters. If you go with these smaller minnows IMO and experience you will need some submerged vegetation cover for them to maintain long term survival. Hardy hybrid water lilies 'small varieties' work well for this. The only ones that Zetts sells in this category are 'Bronze Commanche", Indiana, and Yellow Chromestella. Also see Lilypons Water Gardens in Adamstown, MD. There is quite a bit of old topics discussion here about water lilies for farm ponds.