Bill D. From my casual reading of the latter part of this thread, it appears to me your pond fish growth problem is mainly due to an improper initial fish stocking primarily in terms of balanced numbers, thus a food shortage occurred in 2015. Maybe I am missing some information for your pond history? Too few fish stocked can at times result in poor or not enough recruitment to feed the predators. Thus you are now "scrambling" to boost the forage fish base?. If this is the case, for other new members reading this, this is why we first suggest to first build a very strong diverse forage fish community before stocking most of the predators.
You might very well be correct. A quick history. Pond was originally built fall of 2013. Pond was roughly 1/4 acre at the time. Now about 1/2 acre do to renovation in 2015 which probably disrupted BG spawning. Roughly, here is how it was initially stocked. In April 2014 FHM were stocked. By midsummer there were lots of FHM swimming around and 50 adult 5 to 6 inch BG and 25 BG 2 to 3 inch were stocked. They spawned maybe late August. In September or so, 8 SMB and 1 LMB, all around 8 inches, were stocked. In November 50 YP at 5 to 7 inches were stocked along with 100 PS 2 to 3 inch.
All thoughts are appreciated so others can learn and don't repeat my mistakes.(kinda late for me!
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Edit: Was looking at my notes, I also stocked an additional 10 lbs of FHM fall of 2014.
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