Do a google search for pondboss and member DonoBBD He is south of you if I recall closer to London but has a pond that allows for reproduction of species that rarely reproduce in ponds due to having moving water and lots of rocky substrate that simulate stream conditions. His success may be also from the water quality and water temperature but no one really knows all the variables that lead to success.

He has emerald shiners which do well for him. He may be able to guide you on sourcing both the forage options and the predators. In the US we have options for SHIPPING (sorry not fishing typo) large quantity of small shiners and also large quantity of desired species of crayfish but I do not know if these sales are allowed to customers in Canada.

There may be an advantage to using the excavator to create underwater humps or 'fish lanes' to add contour which gives better places for fish to thrive, but I'm not sure you need more depth. If you want to make the 2nd pond larger and give more shallow areas for spawning and recreation that would make sense. But for most of us, having a deep water zone that is 12-15 feet is plenty in northern lakes. I'm not sure there is any advantage to purposely taking a 18-20' pond and making it 30-40 feet deep unless you want to harvest the gravel anyway. That extra 20 feet of depth is often considered 'dead water' as you usually do not try to aerate the depths between 20' and 50' or more.

If you have access to an excavator now is the time to consider adding an 'upstream' forage pond which can also act as a silt catcher if you have run off events. The forage fond can be small but is hugely valuable for creating a predator free area where you can experiment with different types of forage and can easily gauge your populations, you can more easily watch them feed, you can feed train YP there if you desire, you can seine the forage pond more easily if you create it with a flat bottom and gently sloped entry zone on one side. You can create a pipe outlet into one of your other ponds if you want to put all the forage in that pond at once or if you just want to add a little.

If you decide you want to simulate stream conditions to encourage reproduction for stream sourced shiners or even to try to get walleye reproduction that could be added by way of waterfall fountains which could include moving water through the forage pond as well.

Last edited by canyoncreek; 11/20/24 10:10 PM.