Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Small pond stocking ideas...

This is kind of "out of the box", but what would be wrong with starting in Spring 2026 with a box of GSH fry?

For example, fertilize April 15th in prep for the fry arrival on May 1st. Begin feeding crumble on May 15th to grow the fry to fingerling. When the fingerlings are 2" ... stock 8 to 10" LMB. Survival is the hardest part to predict but the earlier 2" is reached the lower the survival ... and vice-versa. So below is the 3 year outlay of forage and LMB growth for this initial fry stocking with survival of 20% (50,000 of the original 250,000) to 2" GSH lengths. 24 F1 LMB (at ~9" length) would be able to satiate on the original stocking of GSH fry for 3 years or longer so long as the feed was sufficient to provide maintenance to 700 lbs of GSH. I am estimating that at around 1000 lbs of feed annually. Could be considerably less if a fertilization program were active.



I would expect very little or no reproduction from the GSH at this high density. Would probably be tough for LMB to recruit too. For sure, little fish prey would not be highly available to YOY LMB as they would be too small to consume the original stocking of GSH and they would have to compete with thousands of GSH larger than they are for small fish fry and invertebrate prey. I would expect very low recruitment of LMB (and maybe none) for the first three years. Eventually, the original F1s will catch up with the GSH. I expect this to happen in the fourth year. So perhaps if one were to want to transition to BG, I think a good option may be to add 150/acre of 3-5" BG when the initial fry get to be around 1" long. So at 20% survival, this would occur around the middle of June. I would not expect much recruitment from BG until the GSH are thinned down considerably. So the BG buffer the forage as the GSH are depleted. Consuming at satiation, the females would average near 8 lbs whilst the males around 4 lbs in three years. While the plan doesn't incorporate LMB recruitment and culling ... it does take into account normal LMB mortality where the density falls from 24 LMB at initial stocking to 18 over the first three years. Originally this was a plan for 1 acre. So one could reduce the feed accordingly and reduce the initial stocking of LMB from 24 to 18.