It's a sportfish pond that has been recently stocked, the sport fish numbers are relatively low and minnow numbers are still high. The pond was dug in April of last year and filled in 6-7 weeks. In June of last year I stocked 5 dozen FHM and three dozen GSH which was followed by an alum and hydrated lime treatment in July to clear the water. Then last October/December I put in 20 5-9" SMB (mostly 5-6"), 110 4-6" RES, and four gallons of minnows. The water levels dropped a bit last fall which allowed grass and weeds to grow along the edges this spring. It has slowly filled back up but is still not quite at full pool yet but there is a two foot wide ring of flooded vegetation around the edges of the water with plenty of cover for things to hide in. This spring I also added 41 3-6" YP and another 27 2-3" RES. Then three weeks ago I added another 24 4-5" pellet trained SMB from my RAS tank. At the moment I have FHM/GSH fry everywhere, new fry are hiding in the flooded vegetation.

The boom and bust cycles of a new pond are interesting to watch. I had a very large leopard frog hatch last summer with no sport fish in the pond. Also last summer through winter I had very large population of backswimmers that persited until ice out this spring. That was followed by a boom in toad tadpoles this spring that emerged out of the water last month, probably 10,000 tadpoles at one point. The current population that is booming seem to be FHM and GSH, how long that will last I don't know. I also have a fresh population of new tadpoles, probably bull frog tads in the pond now. The pond is still in transistional state of finding some balance.