Good advice so far. I know very little about redbreast sunfish & only a little more about pumpkinseed sunfish for use as forage fish and panfish in the sport fishery pond habitat. Not a lot of PB members use these fish species and their benefit in ponds is still in the 'research stage'.
If you decide to try the cool water fishery (SMB/WE/YP/HSB), my primary advice from lots of experience is initially & importantly stay away from BG when you stock SMB/WE/YP/HSB. BG are too prolific and hard for these cool water fish to control. If you have to have some BG then stock only male BG. However be aware if you do this and any other sunfish species are in the pond you will likely get hybrid bluegills which can lead to management and balance problems. At first stocking, use and explore other forage species & panfish options. Then after several years you can always default to adding & using BG if not satisfied with the initial stocking combination. But once BG are in the pond and pose a problem it requires lot of extra unnecessary management to keep them from becoming overpopulated. Over populated BG are not a big concern in or for smaller ponds that can be easily renovated, but once you get above 1-2 acres fish renovation to remove unwanted species becomes pretty expensive and more effort that could have been avoided. IMO you want to strongly avoid having to do fish renovation and it can easily be avoided by not stocking the "wrong" fish species despite what a fish hatchery and friends recommend. Fish hatchery personnel do not have to deal with your fish balance problems, thus their advice is many times questionable based on one's specific goals.
Secondly - I have a mild concern with previous advice in that is appears to be "light" on forage species for using all the predator species SMB/WE/YP/HSB unless you use very few WE and HSB. Don't expect FHM to survive long and will disappear fast after adding SMB. the golden shiners(GSH) when stocked early and allowed to grow large, can maintain a base population of big adult breeders, however their numbers may not be enough to feed a community of all sizes of SMB/WE/YP/HSB. Often big old GSH are not real productive due to common parasite problems. Expect the SMB and YP to reproduce. YP can be pretty prolific but in ponds with low weed cover SMB reproduction and recruitment eventually over-eat the young and small YP resulting in too little recruitment of large YP for table use. Your WE and HSB will not reproduce so one can have pretty good control of their numbers.
As many have discovered, if you stock pellet trained & raised
fish such as YP and SMB these pellet eating fish grow well and do not put appreciable predatory pressure on the minnow forage base. This allows the minnow/shiners each year to do a better job of recruiting small forage fish into the pond. Lack of proper forage results in slow growth of sport fish, which can be good or bad based on one's goals.
I see in your profile that you have other ponds on site. One of these ponds or a new small one (0.15-0.3ac) can serve as a forage fish pond to supplement forage for the SMB/WE/YP/HSB. Good minnow species for the forage pond are: GSH, FHM, bluntnose minnows, satinfin and/or spotfin shiner and crayfish production works well in the minnow pond. These minnow/shiners species usually have to be sourced from wild populations that are common in PA streams & lakes. A few native fish websites offer the above species that can in low numbers be used for brooder fish in barren ponds.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 11/10/13 07:32 PM.
