Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Breeding in holding tanks

I have thought about and worked for several days for providing my opinions and ideas for this new pond project . Below are my evaluations if they were my four older ponds with plans for building a new pond around 2 acres and 20 to 25 feet in depth and water input from hay and pasture fields. If you want some more advice, ideas, and opinions do not hesitate to ask about them. Other members are always willing to help with comments.

Author’s New Pond Plan – “Desired clarity in the eight to ten foot range and still be fertile enough to maintain balance, I will be elated.” for a 2 ac pond having runoff form a cow pasture and a hay field.

Maintaining Balance is a relative condition. Here is some background about water clarity in new and older ponds especially in Ohio and the midwest.
About all natural waters with alkalinity above 40 will be able to maintain a productive increased ecological balance. Actually the planned new 2 ac pond could easily have too much surface runoff fertility for a water clarity of 8-10 ft. Many NEWLY built ponds in Ohio have water clarity of 2-4ft due to fresh soil nutrient leaching from a fresh clay /dirt basin and natural water alkalinity above 60-80mg/L(ppm). Wind and wave exposed clay/dirt shorelines usually allow frequent silt resuspensions that significantly contribute to water turbidity. The concentration of alkalinity stimulates both planktonic and attached algal photosynthesis. Low alkalinity water of 10-20ppm results in low fish production because adequate alkalinity is necessary for increased plankton production that boosts all higher forms of organisms that result in total pond productivity and decreased water clarity. Low alkalinity water even when fertilized will not normally produce a large abundance of phytoplankton to create higher standing crops of fish.

Summary - A balance of plankton and larger organisms can or will be present in basically all water types, however even those waters with very low productivities and low alkalinity CAN and will have a "balance" of predator / prey. Balance of numbers in ponds is constantly changing due to recruitments and deaths. Low nutrient and low alkalinity fisheries will have a low or very low carrying capacity i.e. very few fish pounds per acre and it is basically determined by the availability of alkalinity and associated abundance of water borne nutrients.

Almost always the clearer the water becomes the fewer pounds of fish that will be present. Same as with producing and maintaining ALL long term higher quality fisheries, it becomes very important to have careful management of the game fish numbers and total fish weights that are ultimately based on the amount of fertility present. Pellet feeding increases fish biomass and increases pond fertility (nutrient accumulation). Water shed runoff always carries some concentration of nutrients. Learn more about carrying capacity from this in depth discussion Pond Boss Forum Archives.
https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92440#Post92440

But Always Remember This - The higher the carrying capacity becomes the more stressed the system becomes and the more vulnerable it is to some sort of failure that usually results as a fish kill. All waters have limits as to how much they will grow. And the amount grown is based on the fertility of the pond. Generally the more nutrients that are available in the water column the less clarity that is present.

Usually in a good fishery the forage base should be at least 10 times the poundage of game fish. Clear balanced water of 8ft to10ft will IMO and that of other fishery studies will only produce per acre around 4 to 6 total lbs of gamefish (LMB), that are supported by 40lbs of forage fish and around 400lbs of invertebrates per acre of the very clear water such as 8-16ft. . This is not a lot of fish and forage, because very clear water is not a productive gamefish environment. This is one reason the current consensus of the fish pros is that the best water clarity for producing a high quality fishery is said to be around 2ft to 3ft of transparency and one that is dominated by "adequate" planktons and one not due to mainly of suspended silt where the water is mainly the color of the local sediment – brownish – gray.

Fish can be grown to large sizes in real clear water 8-10ft, HOWEVER one cannot have very many of them per acre for them to be always thriving and growing. In high water clarity the total predator weight per acre could only be 4 to 6 pounds. In most cases with clear water there are too many thin body or too small game fish where each year more are being produced (reproduction- recruitment). Too many fish usually results in slow or slower growing fish. Carefully managing numbers based on a pond or lake’s productivity is a critical part of producing a CONSISTANT high quality fishery; be it high or low numbers of sportfish. However most everyone wants lots of big sportfish regardless of the water clarity. It is relatively easy with a new water body to produce a high quality fishery. However as the pond becomes old, this is when the quality of fish usually declines as evidenced in your descriptions for the fisheries of your older ponds. Often the decline is caused by lack of good management or mismanagement. Often the pond maintains a fairly consistent fertility over time however the fertility is incorporated into different forms. Often one of these forms is bound fertility in too many small fish that are out of balance.

When managing for very clear water the more fish and fish foods (nutrients) that are added to the system the more fertile it becomes and the more bottom muck that is accumulated. Increased fertility produces plankton that causes or stimulates reduced water clarity. Incoming nutrients of any type decreases water clarity by generally allowing more plankton to grow. This assumes the reduced clarity is not caused primarily by suspended silt (evidenced by more brown soil color rather than shades of green).

Pond 2 As an older pond ages,,,,, it requires more effort to keep it in good user friendly, high, quality condition. For these old deep sludge laden, over grown ponds that have had many years of organic accumulations, usually all areas are too shallow and often leaks occur and embankments are compromised with various shoreline problems, IMO it is best to rebuild these aging ponds and start anew with the current best available management ideas and methods to give the pond new life and produce a new bottom basin with a high quality more useable pond. Before building a new pond, I would first rebuild and maybe enlarge or reduce the size of this No 2 pond and restart it anew with good basin shapes, proper depths and improved habitat conditions and maybe adequate aeration to lengthen it life span. This rebuilt pond fishery could serve the purpose of the proposed tiny HBG Pond describes next as number 3. Also see later fishery ideas.

Pond 3 I agree. I would rebuild and convert this tiny pond into some sort of multi-purpose forage pond where you could raise several different species of sport fish or use it for various types of forage fish production/s depending on needs of the other ponds. It should be designed and shaped to easily concentrate and harvest the annual crop of fish for restocking into the other ponds.

Pond 4 “is a secluded 1ac with cleanest looking water 5’ visibility pretty much year round. At one point an abundance of milfoil in it and I think grass carp & some kind of mussel added that was randomly introduced, thus the clear water. Has several small bass with slightly lower rw. Bottom fairly firm and the dam is in great shape. Best guess on depth is between 10 and 15 feet. Feel this one can be brought back to a higher quality with management. Not seen any big fish at this pond recently but it is where I caught my pb in OH, 25” and pushing 8lbs.”

Before building any new pond, while the construction equipment is present working on other pond projects, I would have this pond pumped to a draw down or completely drained and have sides steepened and the bottom deepened so the deep area is 25% or more of the total area; preferably 16-18ft deep. One option is when at low water level, kill off the fishery and restart it with a new stocking to properly manage it to produce those 4 to 8 lb LMB of the original days.

If these ponds were mine and before building a new pond I would spend the money to put them all in a better more user friendly, higher quality condition. Do this all at one time or gradually renew each one over the next few years. Once renewed these ponds could be used to grow different types of fishery combinations such as BG-LMB, regular Hyb.BG(HBG) , redear sunfish(RES) or specklebelly sunfish (SBS as a hybrid RES) with appropriate predators, a combo of yellow perch(YP) with SMB and/or hybrid striped bass, crappie – hyb crappie with LMB/hybrid striped bass(HSB) combo, or a Walleye(WE) & yellow perch, or a SMB &YP, or WE-SMB-YP, a pond with general fishing having catfish, and a put and take fall stockings of trout. There are numerous possibilities with each of these renewed ponds.

If you are not familiar with SBS they are a HBG of BGXRES. They are known or professed to grow large up to 3 lbs and larger than std HBG. IMO this SBS is a better type of HBG compared to the std HBG of BGXGSF. With using regular HBG, successive generations(Fx) over time trend toward having more green sunfish features. I help manage an old pond that was originally stocked with HBG and now all sunfish average small size and look identical to GSF. With the SBS, later generations the offspring will revert toward either BG or RES and not the lower usable quality GSF. IMO GSF are a prolific, aggressive, large mouth, problematic, predatory type of specie that function as a lower quality of sunfish.

With your current pond situations, I would not spend $30,000 to $40,000 building a new 2 ac pond. I would use a big portion of that money to renew the existing ponds. In these fully renewed ponds, I would then stock some of the suggested interesting fish combos that I mentioned above and then learn about their benefits to you. With some trial and error in the smaller renewed ponds, learn how to best manage those fish combinations. Then after learning what these fisheries can do for your goals, then build your new planned pond and stock the new larger pond from the best fish combos and things that you learned managing the different fish combos in the smaller ponds. For my clients with various goals I use the various types of specialty fish combos noted above and the pond owners are very happy with those unique fisheries. Good management is key for all forms of quality fisheries.