The pond is a little bigger than 1/3 acre... I don't typically eat a lot of fish, so I can't count on me culling the population much...
I like cc, bluegill, lmb, smb and crappie can they be used in a mix that will work? If so how many predators do I need. I've read some suggest only planting
one sex of CC to maintain a consistent number, I assume they can do that with LMB as well. If so will they keep the bluegill or crappie in a healthy number so the fishing will be good without getting too stunted?
Which of those fish you like can be obtained from a local supplier?
The CC idea you have is a very clever one. Why hasn't someone out there produce a line of CC females (where all offspring are the female genotype) They wouldn't dig holes and wouldn't reproduce. Anyways if you were able to stock just females that might be ideal. CC can coexist with FHM and so that would be sufficient forage. A fair proportion of the FHM the CC would be eating would be dead or dying. They turn over rapidly as few live FHM longer than 1.5 years. So they coexist well.
At 48 CC/acre you could grow them in excess of 7 lbs on a 8 year ladder possibly without feed if your water is fertile. At 1/3 acre that would be 16 or 2 per year. If CC reproduce ... the water will be muddy and growth slow without heavy feeding ... so if you can identify sex that would be a bonus. A hatchery might sell you sexed adults. If you can and want to go that route, starting with 16 this spring and then stock 2 take no more than 1 or 2 the same and each year following. You could double everything ... they just won't get as large as they would at 48/acre.
If you stock BG and don't want to actively manage the population you must have a very good standing population of LMB ... especially in a small pond like yours. A pond like that can grow very big BG but the LMB are more like panfish. Anyways it works like this .... An LMB needs to eat X amount of BG/year ... If there are enough of them ... very few survive the gape. For good fishing ... no more than 200 BG/ACRE should survive the LMB gape annually. The fewer that do ... the larger the ultimate sizes will be and the faster they will grow.
You have a small pond and if you are good at determining sex you could add practically anything into a CC/FHM pond in small non-reproducing number. Provided the number is not excessive, they should coexist also with FHM. So for fun bonus fish female LMB/SMB/Crappie or male BG could be added in limited number.
