Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding Pellet feeding SMB

On a pond where the owner wants fast predator growth, AND the predators are stocked lightly, I will recommend 50# of Fatheads and 50# of Golden Shiners per surface acre, and that is with stocking pellet trained fish and feeding them a good quality fish food.

ALSO, there is habitat in the pond to help reduce the predation on the minnow population AND to help them reproduce. Without that, even Golden Shiners can be wiped out from the pond in a year or two, even with pellet trained fish being fed pellets.

You can see WR's of fish in the 140-160+ range doing that. i.e., an 18.5" LMB that should weigh 3.5# can weigh 6 pounds......

Given an overabundance of small prey fish, how long does it take for 4-5" SMB to grow 18" long? I only added 10 SMB to a 1 acre pond full of small fish from a stocking of 50 GSH, 25 YP, 25 RES, and 5 lbs of FHM a couple years earlier. I see a great many 1-3" fry in the pond. Also, I was planning to wait until 2018 to start fishing. Is there any reason to start earlier? This spring I caught FHM and small YP and GSH in a minnow trap.

I can tell you the answer if you can tell me how many pounds of forage you have in the pond for them to eat. Those 10 SMB will have to eat roughly 350 - 400 pounds of fish to grow to 18".

I would fish it for the SMB once a month next year, weigh and measure the SMB when caught and track their growth. That way you know whether to add more forage or not. If there is spawning habitat in the pond for them, once they spawn the offspring will consume part of the forage base too.

I'll try that next year. It will be fun to see how big the perch are as well. A large RES would fun too. I was looking for SMB growth rate assuming no shortage of forage fish. I also have papershell crayfish in there and had added a dozen 3" LCS awhile back but do not know if they survived. I was thinking 3 years for 4" SMB to reach 18" if food was plentiful, but maybe 4 years? I do have rock piles in 2-5 feet of water. I posted pictures of them here on a thread before the pond filled.

If you stocked 4" SMB in the Spring, and they had all that they wanted to eat, I'd bet you would see 18" fish in less than 2 years. Now, be mindful that a 4"-6" fish needs to eat different sized forage fish than a 14"-16" fish to keep the growth rate high..... It's all about calories in vs. calories expended. Fish that are stressed don't eat as much as fish that aren't stressed. Stressors are water quality issues (including O2 levels), harassment from predators, etc.

My hopes are high and my expectations are low:) Thanks for the info!