Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose When to stock LMB?

Hey everyone. I stocked my pond last year with all the bait fish, have let them do their thing for almost a year now and will be adding my LMB this year, I just caught word that there will be a stocking truck near my place on the 13th of this month. This is way more convenient than driving all the way out to my nearest fish farm to pick the bass up. Should I have any concerns about purchasing bass fingerlings this early in the year? I would be purchasing their smallest fingerling 1-3". Just want to make sure that these weren't the runts of the litter from a fall spawn.

Thanks,

David

My thought, pay a higher price for a larger size, 4-6" minimum.

I fully agree with 'hendog'. The TX LMB of 2" to 3" obtained in February thru March are slow growers due to several reasons - most often reason is they were raised as too crowded lacking enough foods. These fish can be healthy but will never grow to the size of their faster growing siblings that achieved 7"-10" lengths their first year. They have lost some of the 1st year growth they could have had. This is because these LMB have lost their potential first year's growth of an ADDITIONAL 3" to 7" (6"-10") that was their ability WHEN getting unlimited foods. It all depends on your goals. If you are not trying to grow real high quality big bass and want just bass that 'could' top out around 5 lb to 6 lb those 1"-3" LMB in February will do that for you providing they have lots & lots of good food each year for the next 7 to 9 years. Lack of adequate foods and when too crowded, ALL types of 1"-3" stocker LMB will not grow their best of 1+ lb gain per year before they die. If those 10" long LMB at one year old get PLENTY of food almost daily EACH year the rest of their lives, these one year olds will be your 9 lb to 12 lb pounders.

Another option if big bass are your goal in Texas, is to wait until the 2026 TX-AK LMB spawns have occurred and best individuals have grown to the 1"-3" size which should be around June to mid summer. In Texas February, 1"-3" LMB in Feb-Mar were last year's hatchlings and they for a few reasons did not get enough food to grow in one year to the possible 5"-10" lengths by Fall-Winter season. To my knowledge TX LMB should be spawning in late March to early April and there is basically very little if any chance of a LMB spawn in TX during late Summer to Fall without very special conditions. Sunfishes BG can spawn in Fall but usually no LMB late Summer-Fall spawns occur especially those LMB sold by traveling fish trucks.

The big disadvantage of getting fish off traveling fish trucks is you have no way of knowing how long those fish have been held in stressed conditions riding on a truck. Those fish are never guaranteed. You have no recourse of those that died. Note - not all dead fish float. It all depends.

Thanks for the quick response, this is exactly why I asked the question.

You brought up some additional items that I left out of the initial post so let me try and answer them here. The goal of the lake as of right now is to be a high catch rate pond, so I have decided to go with northern strain bass for now, and then potentially mix in some Florida genetics a few years later if we start desiring larger fish (if this is even necessary). My pond at max capacity is right around 2.5 acres, however because I don't have a constant water source (need to rely on rain), I believe I will average more around the 2-1.75 acre size. Unfortunately, we are in a pretty bad drought currently, so my pond is only around 1.25 acres. Knowing what it takes to grow a 10lb bass, and that there are going to be limits to the carrying capacity of my pond, my thoughts are that I would rather have more fish to catch than a few lunkers. With all that said, I would still like fast growing fish as we intend to harvest and eat a lot of them.

Unfortunately, my local fish farm is still just fish coming in off a truck, they are more of just a stopover station where they wait to be sold, they don't actually breed any fish.

Contact a fish farm of noted quality and arrange for pickup or delivery. ask for fish from more than one brood source. Picking the fish is a critical element of success. Arrange for fewer but larger stockers as provided (suggested) by Bill.

It sounds like you have plenty of forage fish and you desire to catch numbers over really large fish.

If that's the case, then go ahead and add the bass. For reference, I went with 50 largemouth per acre knowing that some wouldn't make it.

Regardless of your decision of when to add the bass, I would advise you to continue to cater to the forage. I think that's the key no matter what.

+++ to ML10 - "I would advise you to continue to cater to the forage. I think that's the key no matter what."

If it were my pond, I would not be stocking the initial genetics of stocker bass from a traveling fish truck especially if those LMB were only 1"-3" long after 11 months of growth.

For educational reference: Healthy WELL fed LMB can easily grow 1mm per day in good happy water conditions. In central TX peak spawn is in April. Thus LMB fry growing during May, Jun, Jul, Aug Sept Oct and 0.5mm per day for 15 days in Nov this is 195 days of growth that those new 'young of year' (YOY) bass could be 7"-8" long in Nov-Dec of the year they were hatched. In best conditions daily growth can be 1.3mm/day when water temps are 55F+ and this equates to around 11" by one year old. Thus do you see the loss of potential growth of those one year LMB when they are just 1"-3" long in late Winter / early Spring? I have seen small fish farms sell their small runt 2"-3" LMB to other small fish farms in Spring during the spawn season of LMB.

When a bass can go to sleep with its mouth open and wake up with a full belly .

Centex, are you old enough to remember the Fram oil filter commercials? "You can pay me now [shot of small oil filter], or you can pay me later [shot of an engine being hoisted out of a car]!"

That is my interpretation of Bill Cody's advice.

Healthy, fast-growing bass with good genetics at the start of your stocking program are going to pay huge benefits for many years.

For very large orders, you need the fish hatchery to transport them to your pond in a specialized truck. However, for smaller orders, you arranging a pickup time with the seller, driving straight there, and then driving straight back to your pond to start the acclimatizing process is the LEAST stressful way to move fish to your pond.

Lots of people on the forum have reported excellent results transporting fish in oxygenated bags provided by the seller.

One of the quality fish farms near me charges $3 for each oxygenated transport bag, and they put 3-5 lbs of fish in each bag. (I believe that is based both on the species and the travel time to your pond.)

How many LMB are you planning to use in your initial stocking? I bet we have experts that could give you a good estimate of how many 4" bass fingerlings are in a pound.

My (non-expert) advice would be to pick up the best genetics possible (good fish farm) and pick them up at the optimal time of their hatchery production cycle (when you are going to get a large percentage of healthy fast-growers).

Good luck on the next phase of your pond management journey. You are now getting up to the really fun stuff!

I have certainly gained a little weight this winter.

There is definitely going to be big trouble if I ever catch the sick b*astard that has been putting pizza and beer in my mouth while I have been sleeping!

Something to consider ...

A year with no predators should have made tens of thousands of fish prey items for your new LMB stocking. If the numbers of YOY are large enough, they should have mostly filled carry in combination with the adults. So there is good bank of consumable forage for the stocked LMB ... provided ... the LMB that are stocked can consume them. If you are sparse on minnows but have many 1" to 3" BG YOY overwintered, it might be a good idea to stock LMB that are large enough to easily consume them. Like Dave said, just hold their mouths open and allow their bellies to be filled. 1" -3" LMB will find 1"-3" BG too large to easily consume. Now if you have enough minnows to grow them past the 1"-3" BG forage ... no problem with 1-3" LMB. I would probably err on the side of safety and stock larger fingerlings from last year's crop and travel to get them or have them delivered from a reputable supplier. You are going to get only one chance to do it optimally. So be willing to do the initial stocking most optimally however inconvenient it may be.

If you purchase the 1"-3" LMB, just be aware that the majority of fish will typically be the 1" and not the 3". You didn't say how big your "bait" fish are, nor what species they are. BG/CNBG that are 4+" can eat a 1" LMB. Plus like Bill said, any LMB that you purchase in Feb/March were spawned in 2025. I'd look at getting minimum 4"-6" fish. If you want to get 1"-3" LMB I would wait until June. That way you are getting LMB that were hatched in 2026.

Personally if I lived near Austin, I'd call Overtons in Buffalo, Tx. and drive to them to get the LMB. They are what? 3 hours away? We all know you will get good fish from them. I'd stock 150ish :LMB in there. Remember, LMB eat fish that are 1/4 - 1/3 their body length so your stocker LMB have to be of the appropriate size that the they can consume the bait fish.

ANY fish you stock, when stocking smaller numbers, I would look at each fish to ensure that they are the correct species. That's hard to do when you are stocking 1,000's of fish at the same time.

So, some of you have read a previous post of mine where my pond got absolutely hammered by cormorants. Right now, I'm still in the process of trying to figure out what exactly I have currently left in the pond. I tried fishing it for about an hour and couldn't catch a single bluegill. I used to see thousands of minnows at the surface and now there are just a few here and there near the submerged brush. My gut is telling me that they probably eliminated the bulk of the original 1,000 bluegill I put in there. I'm hoping I have a lot of smaller bluegill fry though; however, I can't really confirm it. It's fairly warm here right now so I'm going to turn one of the feeders on to disperse 1 second worth of food and see if anything starts coming back up to eat it.

Originally the idea of putting in smaller bass was more comforting because I believe I have the food chain for them to thrive. However, at this point I'm leaning towards stocking the bait fish again with another 1,000 bluegills, 10lbs of minnows plus some red ears alongside maybe only 75-100 bass.

I did confirm that my regular fish farm will have large Northern strain bass fairly soon. I looked into Overtones and they want $6 a fish for their northern bass. At the end of the day, my thoughts are that the food chain probably matters more than the genetics of the fish so I was planning on spending that last bit of cash on more bluegill.

If my last post seems very contradictory to my original post, it was only because I was trying to get a short and simple answer to buying small bass off a fish truck......which I can decisively say, I'm not doing. At this point the thread has evolved a bit so I'm updating to give you all a more truthful state of my situation.

I added LMB a year and a half ago to my pond that was overpopulated with GSF, i mean loaded with them. Now, all but the very largest GSF are gone and i assume those will be wiped out by the end of the year. Now im scrambling to replace forage.

Point is no matter how much forage you think you have LMB will wipe them out. Assuming you have a pond and not a lake?
I addeed 1-2" LMB and they thrived!

What was the water temp when you fished it, and what direction was the wind out of?

Wind was out of the north. Not sure what the temp of the pond was. I'm in the process of putting a huge mailbox out at the lake where i can keep basic tools and a notebook to track stuff. I'm going to try and take a temp reading today when I go out.

Temp is actually 66.7 degrees at around 12-18" deep. Our lows have been in the 50s, highs have been in the upper 70s or low 80s for over a week now and with the exception of a few cold mornings in the 40s, this trend looks to continue with out any serious cold snaps in the extended forecast.

We fished it again and after almost an hour we only caught one 2.5" bluegill. We had a few nibble at the worms, but we only went through around 7 worms, and these are small home grown worms, not giant nightcrawlers that you buy. One worm would fit on the little tiny hooks we were using. We are starting to see a lot more mosquito fish at the top including some fairly large ones, but a complete lack of bluegill.

I turned on one of the feeders to go off in the evening for just a second to see if fish start coming up to hit the feed.

You should see some action at the feeder.

My water temp is at 55 and was frozen from 1/24 to 2/7. I hand threw some feed yesterday evening and got a very good response. Caught LMB from 4" to 10" and a couple of 8" BG, saw numerous BG 3-5". Even saw some of the 10# CC feeding.

My largest LMB from 2025 was 3.42#.

I'm a good bit further south than some are, but our water temperature is 60 degrees and the bluegill are feeding like piranhas right now.

From what I've seen the past two seasons I've concluded that in our neck of the woods we will STOP feeding around Thanksgiving and START feeding again mid/late February.