1.) Personally, and this is just my opinion, putting the emergents in is a waste of money (if you are buying them) and time. Why? Waterfowl will bring them in for free. I have four or five different kinds of emergents, (two types of rushes) and they all came in by the birds. If you get emergents in you don't want, just selectivly eliminate them with a herbicide. I will be selectively removing the larger rush in my pond, and keeping the smaller species. The larger one is as evasive as my the cattails. It tends to add a lot of organic matter when it dies off in the fall and is making may shoreline shallower and shallower just like the cattails do.
My idea of getting erosion control is to seed the banks heavily with grass seed (just scatter it on the surface), and then stake down burlap over it to stop erosion AND keep the birds from eating all your seed. (Birds can rapidly eat your grass seed!) The burlap also holds the seed in place under the burlap. There is enough light under the burlap to allow the seeds to germinate, the burlap protects the seeds from frost, and the grass actually grows right up through the burlap and binds with it. Some does push the burlap up a little but that doesn't hurt anything. The burlap (untreated) decomposes in about a year or two. By that time the grass has taken hold. You can get 100 yard 6 feet wide rolls shipped UPS from Dayton Burlap for about $100.00 per roll.
http://www.daybag.com/ (They also sell the staples to stake down the burlap)
2.) Laggis onlys sells hybrid bluegills, not regular bluegills.
I think hybrids would be fun and get large in the smaller pond if you feed them. They do have their place if a bass pond is not the goal.
