Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Now I've gone and confused myself

We finally got our first pond dug and filled. It's probably just under 1/4 acre at this point and 10'+ in the middle. It backfills upstream in to the trees quite a at about 4 feet deep as it heads up hill.

The original plan had been to stock it with snails, FHM, crayfish, RES and a few catfish. Then my wife got ducks. A lot of ducks (17).

And she decided that she likes BG. So now I'm thinking crayfish, FHM, GSH, BG, YP and a few SMB. We also have native creek chubs that seem to be in every trickle or puddle of water here. I also intend to some day enlarge the pond on the top end after we get the larger downstream pond built in a few years.

I'm planning a small stocking in the fall since most of my fish money got eaten up by a blown head gasket in my truck. So probably just the crayfish and minnows. And 'maybe' a handful of YP or BG just because.

I really thought I had a plan all worked out. See what happens when you have too much time to think?

Hey Steve-
What is your priority for the pond [other than the obvious--keeping Momma happy!], from a fish/fishing standpoint?
Are you going to feed?
How much time and effort do you want to spend managing the balance of fish?

Answers to those questions will probably help "unconfuse" you.....for example, if you're going to have a pond in our neck of the woods with BG and SMB, you'll have to invest a fair amount of time in keeping the BG in check.

Yes, I'm going to feed because wifey loves to feed critters. She lets the ducks eat out of her hands.

The purpose of the pond is to give us some eaters for us and the neighbors. But mostly it's a starter pond until I have the time/money to build the 8 acre large pond downstream from this one. The large pond will be YP and WE as the main fish.

So the real purpose of this pond is to give us training and an on hand starter source for the big pond later.

The BG reproducing was one reason we were originally planning to go RES. Not a huge fan of LMB, kind of the common boring fish everyone seems to have/want, but a few males to help keep things in check isn't out of the question.

Just remember whatever fish are upstream of your pond will at some point end up IN your pond.

With all those ducks you might have nutrient and turbid water issues.

Truer words were never spoken. Given this, and plans for 8 acres of YP/WE below, I wouldn't consider the addition of BG, unless there is no even remote possibility of overflow of one watershed to the other. I love the idea of YP and WE at our latitude, and they can do well. If you can raise up a good reproducing population of YP now to go into the big pond later, you'll be way ahead of the curve.

As mentioned stay away from BG if you want predators of SMB and or WE. Neither predator is very compatible with BG. Best success with BG without intense management is LMB. Pick fish that naturally benefit each other for bigger and easier results.

Spent a fair amount of time talking with wifey about what we want out of the small pond and think we have a start of a plan.

I think that we are just going to stock with YP, FHM, and crayfish to start.

Also, since the pond is fed by 2 different springs coming down different channels we have a fair amount of flow in to the pond coming down stream. We will add a few trout a year later or so just to see what happens and give us a little variety.

The short term plan is to simply fish for dinner a 'lot' and if the YP population starts to out grow our ability to control them we can add a few predators then and fish accordingly. This will put us in position to have an on hand supply of YP and FHM for when the large pond is build that we can transfer over either by cutting the dam or catch and release over the top.

This does put us in the position of having to fish to control the population rather than trying to strike some biological balance with predators and prey. But I can think of worse chores that I have to do around here.