Really beautiful lake with nice surrounding area. My wife would have liked even bigger than the 3.5 acres we ended up with, but land available near the house did not allow it without damming up a seasonal creek and that would have involved the Corps as well as probably other government agencies I did not even want to talk to. So we ended up with as big as what would fit the space and still classify it as a stock pond. Nine acres is a nice, big, BOW.
Early on I had read that under-stocking leads to over population of fish worse than stocking the recommended amount. Don't remember where I read that. May have been a Kansas or Missouri publication which I relied on pretty heavily before I discovered Pond Boss forum. That never really made complete sense to me, but I guess they had a reason for saying it. I can see where it would get the balance off early if the forage fish did not populate enough to fill the space in the pond before the bass got big enough to eat the forage, maybe leading to bass over population without enough forage rather quickly. That is all I can surmise anyway. If that is the case it would seem if a person was going to under stock, maybe let the forage fish go a couple of years????? before adding predators??? I don't know.
I would sure like to hear some of the experts advice on under-stocking because that is probably what I am going to end up doing with my son's and daughter's pond. I will probably take larger forage fish in smaller numbers out of my pond and let them reproduce for the forage base, then add the larger LMB also caught from my pond a couple years later.
This is not exactly the situation you have, but it might be similar, so I am interested in what you learn from Overtons as well as other people here on the forum about bringing up the population to proper numbers from the original under-stocking.
I would imagine a fishery that sells fish is going to look at it from the perspective of selling you fish and getting the BOW up to productive fishing speed ASAP for you to enjoy. I will be looking at it from the angle of spending little to no money but taking more time to get the fishery to where it is optimum. The son and daughter will not have a lot of money to spend on stocking fish, so it will be up to me to do it out of my pond on a little longer time line. I know that is not the way that most pond owners will look at it or the optimum way, but we all have to work within our means. Most want to get the fishery up to speed as quickly as possible. I don't mind if it takes a few years longer. If the son or daughter want different, they can buy the fish they want.
Anyway, interested in what you find out in the way of managing your situation because of similarities I may face.
