Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Raising Forage and Bait Help stocking a new mini forage pond

I am hoping to get some ideas about how to stock a mini forage pond I just built. Here are some parameters/goals:

Forage Pond is roughly 1/10th acre and 6 feet deep.
Forage Pond will overflow into main pond during high water events (ie., can't have anything in forage pond I don't want in main.)
Main pond was stocked this spring with YP, FHM, GSH, HBCP, RES.
Plan on stocking HSB this fall and SMB next spring. Maybe some WE too.
Goals for main pond are nice sized, but plentiful panfish for the kids and some good fighting yet tasty fish for the older kids (me and my friends).
I will aerate and auto feed the main pond. Will probably not aerate the forage pond initially. Will probably hand feed.
There are some pics of my project under the post heading "mini forage pond" if seeing it would help. Thanks...

Hope this helps...IME, if water flows and fish can get out, they can get in as well. If you have the ability to draw the forage pond down to start over, your options are wide open. I would start simple and cheap with FHM. With FHM, there is very little to go wrong and the water quality doesn't have to be perfect. But if something does go wrong, it will be a very low cost lesson.

Personally, If the BOW allows it, I like to try and use smaller forage ponds to raise game fish as forage, like YP or BG. I learn about the game fish and if I'm successful (which is rare by the way ) use the YOY as forage in my bigger ponds. This all assumes that I can kill off and restart the forage pond easily and inexpensively.

For me, forage ponds are GREAT fun!