joeambro- welcome for another NY pond owner to this Forum. Good start on your pond. The only thing that I would have done differently for you pond structure is to gather all your fish structures together. Separated they primarily act as a fish attractors where larger fish wait to ambush small fish are they approach the sparse structure. Grouped together they perform as fish attractors and as a weed bed - dense fish refuge area for small fish. Your pond will need good dense refuge areas to protect small fish from heavy predation unless you severely limit numbers of fish eating predators. Small ponds with predators need refuge areas not so much fish attractors.
You ask "Is there any other species I can add to this combination?" There are some other fish species that will function well with the FHM-YP-SMB combo, however I think you will find that this fishery will meet all your initial goals. Try just the 3 species first and see how it performs for 3-5 yrs. Then if there is a management need or personal desire of another species then add it. From my experience you will find that it will be extremely hard to maintain FHM with the bass present at a balanced density. To keep numerous forage fish you will have to purposefully harvest bass to very low predatory numbers or have a somewhat weedy pond as dense refuge for small fish as food items for numerous predators in a small area (0.7ac). After 4-6yrs with the pond and fishery established then and only then if the pond has high numbers of small fish, the other fish such as CC, Crappie, walleye, pickerel can be added. Crappie are a very risky management fish to add to a small pond. You will find that a good productive YP population will provide all your needs of easy to catch, good eating, larger sizes (10-13"), fun to catch, grow to nice cleanable sizes, & provides adequate forage for limited or reasonable number of predators.
Initial stocked species could be a few pumpkinseed sunfish (PS) to substitute for the BG. Dr.Willis in his research found PS work well with YP-SMB. You are too far north for southern hatched redear sunfish (RES) to survive NY winters unless there are some thriving in your area lakes. Southern MI with similar climate to NY does has breeding populations of RES. A few breeder PS would likely have to be sourced from local water since few if any fish farms in NY raise them. In new water One or a few pair would provide lots of fingerlings. PS are not quite as prolific as BG and will provide a additional small forage fish to reduce predation pressure on the FHM and YP. This could allow more bonus predators to be present such as walleye, HSB, CC or BCP which would be a very risky addition. BCP could easily upset the whole balance of a YP-SMB based fishery.
Thanks Bill! I was hoping there would be more pond owners from NY or at least the North East. I agree, I should have placed my structure together. I chose to not move everything after I placed it, I decided to just build more and use those points to continually add more to make better denser "weed beds".
Thanks for the stocking advice. Since doing more research on crappie, I am steering clear for now. If anything, maybe in the future as you suggest, I would consider another species such as HSB,CC, or even walleye. I was unaware that walleye would survive in such a small body of water.
So as of right now I am leaning with the SMB-YP-FHM and maybe PS (if I can find them) fishery to start.
