Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking What to stock in .15 acre existing pond?

So I have an existing pond on my property that when full is around a 1/2 acre, however over the past 6 years the pond has only been full twice. It mostly sits around .25 to .15 acres in size. We rely on rain water to fill it and unfortunately it takes more of a rain event to get this thing full. Despite having a decent amount of land that drains into the pond and doing some improvements to try and increase the drainage basin, the land is extremely flat and I'm realizing that the amount of run off you get from flat land is far less than that of land with even a little bit of slope. This has been kind of a bummer for me because with out at least somewhat consistent water it makes management a bit difficult. Overall though, the pond does hold water fairly well and has never gone dry. We have literally been in a drought here in central Texas for almost the entire time we have owned the property, so if that changes maybe the future of this pond could change as well.

My original idea was to turn this pond into a catfish pond for the kids but after reading a lot of the input on catfish ponds it sounds like they are not as easy to catch as one might think and you are going to need to net out all the fish around once a year. One last challenge for this pond is that it is lined with willow trees that drop a lot of branches into the water. The pond sits on our property line and the trees provide a screen between us and the neighbors house. My wife absolutely prohibits me from removing that row of trees. I bring this up because netting fish could be difficult with all the tree branches in the way.

After fishing this pond pretty extensively over the years we have discovered Bass, bluegill and crappie. We have been culling all the bass and crappie from the pond in preparation for putting in catfish and have moved a lot of the bluegill over to our new 2 acre pond which is a bass/bluegill set up. The last 6 months we have only been able to catch bluegill and even those have been sparse. My gut tells me there may still be some baby bass in the pond that we will need to continue to cull out however this last winter the pond was once again extremely low and the cranes started taking a lot of interest in the spot. I'm unsure how deep the pond is but my guess is 9-10ft when full.

Now that we have an exciting new 2 acre pond on the property that is consuming a lot of time and work, I've noticed that my attention span for this existing pond has started to fade a bit. I wanted to see if anyone else had any other suggestions with what to do with it that wouldn't require intensive management? My current train of thought right now is to go ahead and put in 50 or so channel cats, impose strict catch and keep rules so as not to educate the fish and then have the intentions of trapping/netting the remaining fish which may or may not happen depending on my work load. I feel my worst case scenario is that I wind up with a lot of really big pet catfish that may at one point die off because they exceed the carrying capacity of the pond. I will say that this pond is very close to power, so aeration is a possibility. Option 2 is to let the bluegill recover, possibly move over a few bass from our 2 acre pond and continue to manage it as a bass/bluegill pond as best as possible. I'm interested to know what you all think,

Thanks in advance.

Use it as you have - a forage pond. Put in small fish and as they grow move them to the other ponds. Get the LMB out and grow BG/RES by keeping a few adults in and seining out the offspring to move to the other ponds when the water gets low. If you want add a few CC to catch.

I would cut and poison the willows before I did any other projects regarding the fish.

Willows with access to water and sunlight are just going to keep on growing. Further, getting rid of the willows may have a surprising impact on your water level.

(I have some ideas if needed - that may or may not work in your situation.)

You stated that the pond is on the property line. Is there enough room "behind" the willows where you could plant shrubs or trees that, in a few years, would provide the desired screen presently offered by the willows? Once those new screen plants are grown up, then remove the messy, highly water consumptive willows.

ewest's forage pond idea is attractive to me. Or, just use the little puddle as a mutt pond. Add many species of fish so that inexperienced anglers have a chance to observe and catch numerous different fishes. Youngsters who fish my pond, after catching all sorts of fish, then want to try to identify the fish swimming in the water. Visibility is good here, so that's possible. Advanced young anglers get to observe the different "takes" used by the different fish species when they come up for pellets. They learn not to "set the hook" too early when they see a fish take the bait. "Sight fishing" in abundance.

I see from 4Corners post that I read the original post too quickly and missed the part that the willows must remain. Whoops on my part.

That being said, I like 4Corners idea to fit different trees behind the willows if at all possible.

If not, are you on good terms with your neighbor? Would they agree to a screening hedge on THEIR side of the property line if you contributed partly to the cost, or watering, or etc.? It (usually) never hurts to ask.

Our local Agricultural agents will come out to look at properties and then make suggestions on how to solve problems, recommend options for new plants, give you a time line for growth of new plants, where to get plants & suggestions for quickest success. It is free advice from a professional. I would assume it is the same in Texas.

So 4corners idea will work, there is plenty of room to plant another row of trees behind. That does solve a good number of problems, although it will take several years. For whatever its worth, I've been told by just about everyone that the willow trees suck this pond dry of water, however the pond seems to decline pretty much at the same rate as all the other ponds in the area.

I do agree that a baitfish pond will definitely be beneficial for the next few years as well. I'm also hoping that there are a lot of tiny bluegill currently in this pond since most of the predators have been fished out. Hopefully with some feed I could start growing them a bit faster.