Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations New Pond in Ohio - seek advice

Scott, it does my heart good to see such a selfless person as yourself, willing to catch and eat fish if necessary, join the forum.

Your basic stocking plan outline sounds viable to me; with no YP experience I can't comment on their presence in a BG/LMB pond, but we have good numbers of both members with YP experience and threads discussing YP in ponds. Do a search for "Yellow Perch" or "YP" in the "Stocking a New Pond" and "Managing an Existing Pond" areas of the forum; this should give you some reading material to provide some answers and some additional questions about YP in your pond.

WRT stocking minnows, almost everyone here would agree that purchasing 5 or 10 pounds of Fathead Minnows ("FH") per acre of a new pond, once there is 4-5 feet of water (depth) in it, is a good practice. If you were contemplating wild minnows, be aware of the (strong) possibility of introducing species you really don't want in this manner.

As far as transferring BG from your existing pond, there are a number of arguments both for and against this practice:

Some Pros:
1) They're free
2) Transferring your own fish would (to me) be an enjoyable, soul-fulfilling activity
3) If the small pond is only 15 feet away, anything undesirable (fish disease or parasites, undesirable similar Lepomis (sunfish) species such as Green Sunfish {"GSF"}, nasty aquatic plants) in it that might be transferred to the new pond with a BG move will probably show up there anyway even if you don't move BG over.

Some Cons:
1) Depending on your knowledge of Sunfish and ability to identify them, "Bluegill" could acutally be a number of different species, including GSF (generally considered bad), Redear Sunfish ("RES", generally considered good), and others.
2) You could be moving fish diseases or parasites with the BG.
3) The cost of stocking fish for a new pond is small compared with the cost of a new pond ($Hundreds versus $Thousands or $10Thousands).
4) Most existing stocking "recipes" are based on fairly large numbers of fairly small fish. Transfer usually involves smaller number of larger fish, which has an affect of population dynamics in the new pond. This does not IMO rule out transfer stocking, it just means you need to read, study, and figure out how many larger BG you want to transfer ahead of time if your new pond is going to do the best it can.

Personally, I would do it, but only after figuring out all the angles mentioned above.

Some other comments:
1) Like ewest said, most of us don't consider Duckweed desirable. Visiting waterfowl will likely bring it in whether you decide you want it or not.
2) Consider buying some RES to go in with your BG (unless you're lucky enough to have some in the small pond to transfer). We Redear proponents like how they get bigger than BG, don't overpopulate, and like to eat snails which helps control many fish parasites in the pond.
3) If it were me I would be planning on putting in LMB no later than 1 year after the initial stocking, but that is dependant upon many variables including size/number of BG you put in, the YP question, etc. Study and possibly revise the LMB stocking plan.
4) Find out and decide what size fish of different species you have available and plan to stock - "when to put in fish" with small versus large sizes will get different recommendations.