I wanted to give an update on what has happened with the pond and I have a few follow up questions.
So about 30 days after my initial stocking, I lucked out and was able to get another 300 CNBG that were super jumbo adult size used for a kid's fishing event. Before putting these fish in, the original CNBG were already starting to hit the feeder, and I still had not been able to see any FHM in the pond. I only bring this up because the additional BG I put it could easily make a snack of a FHM compared to the original ones which would have struggled with them. A few weeks ago, we had a rainstorm hit us just right and filled us all the way to the top. So, we went from 40% full to 100% full overnight. Prior to the water filling up, the bg were hitting the feeder really hard and I had bumped the feed time up several times. Now that the pond is full, they are barely hitting it at all, so I am now back to an absolute minimum feeding of 1 second just in the morning. There are a few fish still going after the feed but not until it drifts to the other bank. I'm assuming all these fish are still in there and healthy? I'm also assuming that all the newly flooded plants may have had held a lot of insects that are more appetizing than the pellet feed.
So now that the pond is full and the fear of it running dry is a thing of the past, I want to finish and round out my baitfish stocking. I was going to add another 400 CNBG (this will bring me to 1,000 total) as well as 200-300 RES. I was once again going to purchase another 5lbs or so of FHM. However this time I'm going to release it in the new shallow section which is full and full of sunflowers and Johnson grass that had popped up before filling. So, the amount of cover for them will be much better than before. Bass won't be added until next year at around 150-200.
At this point, the only thing I can see in the water are tadpoles and mosquito fish. I can't see any bluegill fry or anything that may resemble a FHM. The only time I even see a bluegill is when they come up to hit the feed. Is it possible that the rain and lake filling may have interrupted their spawning cycle? Am I just being impatient wanting to see results sooner than is reasonable? I would have thought that I would have seen some fish fry by now.
