thanks for stopping by and posting pictures and an update on your pond. There are not enough northern pond owners posting here and northern ponds are very different than southern US ponds. We need to learn as much as we can from each other. Also there are not many blank slate ponds like yours to learn from.
You are spot on in getting your forage base started and your structure/vegetation started to let the smallest fish get started and have a refuge.
I surely will be working on some type of enclosure with a attraction of some type (food, flowing water, temperature controlled water) to get the SFS to congregate and see if we can better net them at will in the future.
I'm also going to try some additional spawning structure ideas for the SFS to see if we can really ramp up minnow production. I'm seeing less reproduction last summer which may be simply due to not enough spawning structures and also need for more complex artificial hiding places for the young fish after they hatch. I can't rely on natural vegetation so will have to come up with more artificial structures.
