Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Raising Forage and Bait Help

Hello everyone, this is my situation. I live in Arkport, New York and I have a 2 year old pond that is aproximently a half acre 16 ft deep. I areate with a gast 1/3 hp compressor with 2 diffusers. When the pond was first built I got ahead of myself and added some fish (keep in mind that I did not have the areator or had never heard of pond boss). Anyways, I added probly 60 12-15''large mouth bass, 50 15-18'' brown trout, 50-60 mature blue gill, 25 chanel cats 10-15'' and 8 pounds of fathead minnows.The trout seemed to do very well for awhile until last summer when we got that dry spell, fish started gasping for air for a couple of days and then they started dieing off ,it wasen't just the trout, it was a little bit of everything. Anyways, the problem was solved once we installed the areation unit.Last fall I sunk aproximently 5 cedar trees along the edge of the pond for structure. The fish seem to enjoy hanging out around them. I took probly 40 bass from the mix last fall to eat and added around 8 18- 24''largemouth bass to help keep the bluegille fry down. This winter I was ice fishing and added aproximently 40 8-10'' perch that were full of eggs and around 20 black crappie 8-10'' I've now been reading alot more on the pond boss articles(daily) and I hope that I don't mess the pond up with adding the crappie. There such a fun fish to catch and taste great so I thought it was a great idea at the time.Anyways what is done is done, question, I was wondering if I were to fence one end of the pond off and add structure for fathead minnows, use fenceing big enough for the fatheads to swim out but, small enough for predator fish not to get in? Any advise or comments anyone could give me would be very helpful.All the fish seem to be doing well, after the ice melted I didn't see any floaters..

I was just thinking that if I just keep adding the fatheads the fish will just eat them and they will never get established sience I didn't add them first and let them establish am I out of line with my thoughts with the fence in the water to keep other fish away from them? If it's not a bad idea, how big of a area should I fence off? How many fatheads should I add? The blue gill spawned last year and there was thousands of fry, they seemed to like staying as close to the shore line as possible and very skiddish I don't know if this will help at all but, there isen't alot of plantlife in the pond, some but pretty clear and it's also spring fed, water always going in and going out of the spillway.

kristoffer1277 you should get PB mag and read the article on blocking nets 2 issues back. Having said that I don't think you can establish a FH population in a LMB pond. It can be used as a hatchery substitute.

You seem to have a very diverse fishery.

Do you feed? I wonder if feeding might help too in addition to ewest's suggestion.

To me it looks like you have a lot of predators that will eat the baby crappie.
I don't know about the fence idea. I think somebody else said that when bass fry get in there they will ruin it. I you can keep them out it should work.

I do pellet feed, but it's still cold here and the fish don't seem to want anything to do with the pellets.Do you think it's because they've got plenty of food ? Last year I had them trained well, I'de throw some pellets on the pond and they'de go crazzy whitin miniutes..My main concern is that I didn't mess the pond up adding the crappie.

I think there has to be a wait-&-see period.

I agree with Chris; with that many predators in a small pond, the crappie may not have a chance to over multiply.

If you choose, now is the time to catch some of those black crappie back out if you're having second thoughts. You could always pull out 5-10 crappie, and still have them as a bonus fish.

Thanks everyone, I think I'll just wait and see what happens..