I will probably be building a 2 acre pond this summer, and my land has a couple of really old small ponds which cattle used. I am wondering if it would make sense to try to raise my own bluegill to stock in the new pond this fall.

The larger of the two old ponds is about 1/3 acre and perhaps only 3-4 feet deep max. Quite a bit of the pond is very shallow. It gets mostly covered by lotus in the summer. I have tossed in leftover minnows from fishing in the past, and some recently fishing proves it has green sunfish in it.

I am thinking:
1) drain the pond and kill off all the fish. probably kill at least half of the lotus too
2) I have a track hoe coming to dig test holes for the new pond, I would have him dig out a trench/build a peninsula jutting out into the old pond for trapping fish.
3) after it starts filling back up, bucket stock it with 20-30? large adult bluegill from ponds I have access to.

Would it be in reason to expect to be able to seine out 1000 young bluegill this fall? The pond does not have large watershed - there is a risk of it taking too long to re-fill to stock the breeder BG.

After raising BG, I would start over again and raise FHM for annual occasionally feeding fish in the new pond.

pic of the pond as of this weekend:


Last edited by Redonthehead; 03/26/17 08:45 PM.
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