Not that I am all that with stocking experience, but I doubt you can stock too many HSB with your current pond environment, within a reasonable budget, of course. This general statement assumes that your pond is not pushing its holding capacity now.
How many smaller HSB start to push your wallet?
The HSB should help with LMB populations, are definitely fast, and very much stay mostly in deeper waters. I, almost never, probably never see HSB hitting the shores for food. The dozen or so that I have left in my pond feed on pellets and eat the smaller fish that peck the feed at the surface. All of this HSB feeding takes place out above the deepest part of my 1/4 acre pond (10 foot). My pond is small yet the 10 foot depths constitute about 1/3 to half the pond bottom (steep sides). Rarely do I see them hit in anything less than 6 foot deep waters.
You can compensate with a higher stocking of smaller fish to fight predation. My guess would be triple the number of what you might stock at 12 inches or larger and see what progresses. My original HSB went in at the 4" to 6" range, at 40 total for my fishless small pond, along with several hundred HBG, a fair amount of FHM, and some RES. The HSB took to feed slowly but decent and in one year were about a pound and gained a pound every year for the next few years. They proabably feed mostly on the FHM when I was not watching. They went in the pond in '17, IRC, and have stopped gaining weight in the last couple years. I suspect due to age as the pond is still pretty full of forage. Point is, stock high numbers of smaller ones and you should see larger HSB at the feeder within a year, given survival.
If it were me, I'd source 10-12" HSB and throw in 100 to 200 this fall or better yet early next spring.
I get my ladder stocked HSB at 10-12" from Harrison Fishery. (46074 Lassofish St, Hurdland, MO 63547). They might be able to reach to your area. Many fisheries share truck deliveries with each other and will pick up and drop off for each other.
