Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Raising Forage and Bait Keeping fish separated?

Not sure where to post this but I wound up in a unique situation where my neighbor's pond and one of my ponds are linked together with a 3'-4' deep channel. Doing this greatly increases my water capture rate, so I helped pay to have it done. Essentially now any additional run off from his land helps fill the ponds on my land. My issue is that I want to turn my pond into a catfish only pond and his pond is a BG/LMB/Crappie pond. My thoughts were to just put a culvert pipe or two into the trench and then fill that section with dirt so that water can flow from his pond to mine but then put a screen/net over the ends of the culverts to keep fish from coming through. The pipe would be decently deep so hopefully during high water flow a lot of the debris will float above the pipes and not get sucked into the screen. I'm worried about using too fine of a screen because I think it would clog and then would cause flooding around his cabin. My assumptions are that I would need a very fine screen to keep small fry and eggs from drifting into my pond, and something that small would have to be cleaned regularly and may cause the water to back up too much during heavy rain events, My other thought is that my pond is void of any cover and is just a round hole in the ground so if I were to let small fish through, would the catfish just be able to eat these guys up? My pond is only about a 1/4 acre, his pond is about 1/3, the channel between the ponds which was partially present is actually about 1/4-1/3 acre by itself, however its only 3-5' deep and is currently dry. We are dependent on rain water run off to fill these ponds and they tend to yo-yo in depth due to our ongoing drought so trying to manage the fish load will be much easier if I don't have additional fish making their way into my pond.

I posted in this section of the forum because I was hoping that some of you all who are raising forage fish may have some way of keeping fish separated and may have some alternative suggestions that I haven't thought of. Also may have a suggestion for where to buy some netting and what size hole?

Thanks in advance.

I don't think even the smallest of screens will 100% keep fish from finding a way. Especially crappie. I think you can still have a successful catfish "only" pond though, especially if you keep it devoid of vegetation and ladder stock your cats. And remove them when caught. If you take this on with knowing you'll get some overflow fish, and be ok with that, should be happy with the results. May eventually have to get more predators to help out.

What were you planning on feeding your cats?

I've got 3 pellet feeders, one for this catfish tank and two for my bass pond. I was intending to go with optimal for all my fish food, but I guess I'm on the hunt for something new now.

So my neighbor's pond does have crappie in it unfortunately.

Any kind of 'screen' in the water will get clogged, and the finer the screen, the quicker it will get clogged.

Also seem to clog when you really need water flow going through it.