Hi All, since building my lake things have changed a bit, ie. it's turned out to be a better quality water body than I thought that supports trout very well and we love ice fishing them. I built the lake with the intention of creating a great LMB fishing spot but only put about 3 in last summer at about the 4-6 inch size (chances are good that the eagles/otters/turtles bagged them already. But I did put thousands of Pumpkinseed sunfish in and they've reproduced very well - they spawned from the end of june to about the end of august and there are now zillions of them. So it's ready to put LMB in but...I also put some RBT and BRT (brook trout?) in as an experiment and they are doing very well. So I'd like to pivot from LMB to trout - can i do that practically with so many sunfish in there now?
The lake is 6 acres, averages 6-8 feet with 10-12 foot deep spots. Current stocking is FHM, dace, pumkinseeds, 3 bass, 1500-2000 trout, some suckers.
The RBT (14-16 inches and bigger) we are catching that were stocked last spring are full of small sunfish, the brookies are full of bugs and maybe will switch to sunfish as well when they get a little bigger?
So, instead of putting LMB in that will eat the sunfish ...and my trout, would SMB control the sunfish numbers as well as fishing and trapping them? For stocking I only have access to SMB, LMB, trout species, no walleye or others.
For trout stocking I now put in 8-10 inch brookies and the RBT are 1.5 to 2 pounds and bigger. I did put 500 3-5 inch brookies in last year but that was most likely a waste of money, from now on they would all be as big as I can get them.
Anyway that's my conundrum, I know pivoting isn't good and it's easier to start from new but I dont feel like killing off everything - we eat the sunfish too... Will the SMB and RBT, predators control the sunfish?
I should mention that the lake shouldn't support SMB reproduction.
Cheers.
Louie
Last edited by Tinylake; 02/04/25 10:07 AM.
