My pond is fed by a creek and a spring so it has a lot of different forage fish in it. When it was drawn down this summer it was easy to collect and see what was in there. It has three kinds of Dace, a smaller form of Shiner, a Scullion, a Darter, and some Manatoms that I�m hoping weren�t baby Bullheads. Those were all occurring in the creek so now they are in the pond. In addition there are a ton of carp from 2 to 10 inches (big ones died or I removed when the pond was down) Adult BG, RE and Red Breast sunfish that were added late summer, along with a few hundred crayfish. Currently I only have 6 large predators 4 Musky and 2 Bowfins all over a foot long.

The adult sunfish should be put a bit of a dent in the minnow population. My theory is that the supper predators will focus on the carp since they are a bigger source of protein then the minnows and easier to swallow then the sunfish. Eventually despite all that diversity I think I will wind up with 6 predators and a few carp in the 8 to 20 pound range and not much else. On the bright side all I need is 8 pounds for a state record Bowfin.