Welcome Barry, I can attest to the advice of putting the FHM first. I was in a similar situation as you just one year ago. In fact, my pond filled up exactly one year ago today and I put $30 worth of FHM in shortly after. That was approximately 1000 minnows from 2 to 3 inches long. Fast forward to this last weekend when I stocked HBG, HSB, and RES...The pond is so full of minnows! I stood on the dock yesterday during the heat of the day and estimated that the upper foot of water had 25 minnows (mostly 1 to 1-1/2" long) per cubic foot for as far as I could see out into the pond. To be honest, I wondered if I had too many.
I stocked 2 to 6 inch fish and they should have plenty to eat this year. I believe that waiting a year to stock the fish will actually pay off by the amount of growth they should gain with all the natural forage and it may actually save a bit of money when it comes to supplemental feeding.
At any rate, whether you wait a year to stock your game fish or not, you will want to put something like this in your pond...
These work wonderfully for spawning structures as FHM require rather flat horizontal surfaces to lay their eggs on. I have a 1/4 acre pond and I used 7 stacks of pallets which, once the pond filled up, were about 1 to 2 feet below the surface.
I contemplated waiting until the fall to stock fish and chose to wait until this spring in order to get first dibs on this years fish and fish probably don't do a lot of growing over the winter.
DON'T LET MY PHOTO FOOL YOU. You need more than one cinder block to keep the pallet stack from floating up once the pond fills. I suggest AT LEAST one cinder block per pallet that is in the stack. Don't ask me how I learned that lesson!
