Sorry for those of you who were following my pond stocking adventure. I got busy and forgot to give some updates. I was able to find 300 nice sized YP at the end of last summer. All between 5"-8". My hand is 7" finger to palm for reference in the attached photo. I think I was wrong on the plants that survived. I actually think it was the sagitaria that spread very well. I have 4 or 5 really nice dense patches that grew. with an average area of 10'x5'. They spread laterally very well. I will see if i can add some more corkscrew this summer when it warms up. The minnow population just exploded over last summer and into this spring. There is a small wild minnow that has gotten in that stays about an inch long, they are thick throughout the entire shoreline. I would estimate every cubic foot contains 40-50 of them. The spotfin shiners and the blunt nose minnows all made it through the winter, but they definitely have been thinned out. But even with the predation over the winter, there are considerably more than I planted last summer. I added more spawning habitat for them this spring, so i think they will keep doing well. They like to stick around the water inlet with the moving water. I saw no sign of perch, bluegill, or bass for months over the winter. They all headed to the deep holes. I finally had a nice clear sunny day last week and saw lots of perch! They have grown quite nicely since last summer. I sunk some Christmas trees and added some tree branches for them over the winter, so hopping I had a good spawn this spring. Unfortunately, the BG and LMB have also been multiplying. They are not overpopulating the YP as of yet, but I could see at least a 15-20 of them intermixed with the YP. I will see what kind of thinning I can do this summer. Any suggestions on disrupting their spawning cycles? I would love to figure out how to slow them down.
