Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Raising Forage and Bait Threadfin Shad

So been checking around on prices for Thread fin shad. Best deal I have found so far is for 6000 2" to 3" shad for $1200 delivered to my pond.

My question is this. I can catch these from a local large body of water, but most of the ones I catch will be in the 4" to 6" size with larger gizzard shad thrown in as well. I can transport about 200 at a time to my 7 acre lake.

I am thinking that of course some of these will be too large for my bass to eat but maybe they could start spawning and then I could build up a population??

Thoughts??

do you want Gizzard shad in your pond?

4"-6" shad wont be a problem for larger bass say 4-5 lbs. Depending on what your goals are you may want to hold back on the gizzards. I am assuming you have a bait tank. Depending on how far you have to travel and how big of a tank, you can crowd your tank. I have a 50 gallon tank and last yr would haul 500 at a time. I run oxygen and only transport about an 1.5 hours.

My fear would be not being able to ID each and every fish, and slipping a pair of Gizzard Shad into my pond.

If I didn't have enough LMB in the pond to control the Gizzard shad, any $$ saved would be more than offset by what it would cost to press the reset button on the pond.....

Very good point. Gizzard and TFS are easy to identify and tell the difference. I Use a catch bucket to sort through them before I put them in the bait tank. But knowing how to identify them is crucial.

I think I would be able to identify the difference. I striper fish with both and feel like im pretty familiar with them. Yes I have a bait tank and only about 45 minutes from the source. My real question is it viable to think that the threadfin shad that I put in will eventually spawn and grow a population for me?

just wondering... what is the negative for having gizzard shad in the pond?

I would think that if you have an already healthy bait population then yes. Gizzards have a reputation of growing to big and over populating a pond/lake. Unless you have large enough predator fish to keep them in check it's probably not a good idea. I plan on adding gizzards to my lake in 3 yrs. at that point I hope/should have a healthy bass population with some pushing 10lbs.

Brandon, That is a good point. In last years electrofishing survey the largest bass that they shocked up was 10 pounds and 8 ounces. Had multiple fish over 8 pounds. Relative weight percentages ranged from 88 percent to 125 percent. So I am thinking that I do have a healthy bass population. They did recommend harvesting every bass 12" and under which I did and succeeded in taking 200 +/- over the remainder of the year.

I have another survery scheduled for later this month to see how the pond is progressing. I have taken out 30 12" and under already this year and my plan is to keep everything 12" and under that we catch.

My bream population is crazy!! I have 4 feeders that go off simultaneously and sometimes I schedule my day just to be able to watch it. Its aggressive to say the least. This year we have caught quite a few bream between 1.5 and 2 pounds. I have noticed that the kids are not catching as many of the little tiny bream that they have in years past. Another reason I am thinking that the bass are pounding the young bream population and that maybe I need some additional forage stocking.

Out of the 20 or so 5 pound plus bass that we have caught this spring only one of them seemed to be "poor" he had a very large head but did not have the body to match. If I can figure out how to load a picture in a post I will come back and do that.

I will also be stocking Tilapia again this year after not being able to do it last year.

Sounds like you have a pretty awesome lake!!! I read an article about stocking gizzard shad that was interesting.

http://www.bassresource.com/fish_biology/gizzard_shad.html

Lots here and in studies on problems associated with G Shad in ponds.

See this for example

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=417321&page=1

Thank you for the link. Lots of great information.