If you are near FtWayne spotfins and bluntnose(BNM) are no problem to obtain. For WE/SMB/YP/RES you will want your WE to be a minor player as a bonus fish (6-8/ac) because your current forage choices are limited as to number of species. Reduced pellet feeding frequency of 1-2 per week will reduce the overall carrying capacity. I am not sure the YP-RES will be able to sustain a healthy reproducing spotfin-BNM combination.
RES will not likely reproduce enough to add significantly to the forage availability. LMB do not get much bigger than 11"-12" with just RES as main food items; thus SMB-WE- larger YP will likely behave/grow similarly. My experience is the WE will heavily target the larger spotfins and noticeably or significantly limit their reproduction & recruitment unless you have very good amounts of refuge areas as weed beds. To enhance the forage, initially stock some papershell crayfish to help defray the predation pressure of SMB on the minnows (SFS/BNM). WE/SMB/YP/RES will all frequently eat various growth stages of papershells. Use only papershells for NE Indiana. IF it were my pond I would seriously consider also adding GSH to insure there are large shiners (7"-9") year round to act a brood shiners. With the added crays and GSH the fishery will achieve higher quality and would support a few more WE / ac.
Keep in mind that enlarging the pond beyond 1 ac will also enlarge the costs of maintaining it with labor, chemicalization, and managements efforts. Instead of enlarging the main pond beyond 1.2-1.5 ac use the money to build an additional pond (3rd one) of 0.2-0.5 ac (6-9ft deep) . You may need more added forage than you think. This can supply lots of added fishery benefits for forage species, panfish (YP-RES) and maybe grow out small WE or HSB to add to the main pond. Lots of fish if done correctly can be grown in 0.2-0.3 ac.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 12/14/20 11:39 AM.
