I got permission from a neighbor to stock his 9 acre borrow pit(they excavated dirt here along the highway when they added more lanes back in the 60s I believe). I’ll give a little background on the lake and my plan, and I’d love to hear some advice from some experienced pond managers.

It’s 9 acres and perfectly rectangular. Located in a pasture and around 8-11 feet deep all across. Extremely turbid. Some trees along the bank have tipped in over the years as the ground eroded out from under them. I have fished it a couple times this winter, and the only fish I have marked on the livescope were extremely small <3”. I also left some tipups out there for a couple days with various sized baits and never got a bite. I haven’t managed to catch anything in minnow traps, but I did identify a dead fathead minnow that I chipped out of the ice. I’m pretty sure it’s not a carp fingerling like I feared! So as far as I know , there are only forage fish right now. The owner knows nothing about fishing, but said that over a decade ago someone told him they caught northern out of it. My guess is that it winterkilled due to low water levels during a drought. This could happen again in the future.

My plan is to put my money towards yellow perch, since they’d have a better chance making it through a low water event (is this true?). We have a lot of good boom and bust shallow perch sloughs around here. With the bluegill, I’m willing to start with lower numbers and wait for natural reproduction to take off before forking out the money for a bass and/or walleye stocking. With this size of a pond, even lower ends of stocking recommendations would be quite expensive for a lake that could winterkill at any time.

Last night I successfully transferred around 30 perch(4-5”) and 30 bluegill (5-6”) from a neighbors gravel pit. My plan is to do this a couple more times this winter. Then this spring I plan to buy another 1000 3-4” yellow perch from a local hatchery. Should I supplement the bluegill as well by buying some 2-3” or 3-4” this spring? I would prefer to spend the money on more perch if I can confidently expect 100 bluegill to find each other and successfully spawn in such a large pond. My assumption is that perch would do better in a low oxygen event, and also that bluegill are more prolific spawners and could “catch up” faster from a low stocking rate.