Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Golden Shiners please help.

Starting stocking a 14 acre dam with LMB threeyears ago as the dam winter killed in the late 2000's. Somehow GSF and bullheads got into the dam before putting bass in. Put 8 plus inch bluegills in there and fathead minnows for the first year to spawn. Then later followed with LMB from neighbors pond. Left alone the last two years...

Recently fished it and caught some 6-8 inch bass and some smaller ones 2-4 inches. Also caught a couple of the original bass i stocked in there and they were healthy.

My next move to prevent the bass from being stunted in their later years is potentially stocking Golden Shiners into the dam. My question would be what size should i get from 1-4 inch available. My other question is would be better off creating a bait pond instead of buying food all the time? There is a half acre dugout that is spring fed with no fish in. Thinking of throwing Fatheads and Golden shiners in there and then seining the bait pond to add fish into the bigger dam.

Thoughts???

A little of topic, but I know a guy that used to fight bullheads. Drained and rotenoned a pond trying to eradicate them. They came back. Now he has embraced them as a forage source and is growing huge fish. Just saying....

When I was a kid and I spent summers in Mississippi with my grandparents we used to fish their catfish ponds over there all the time. They always ended up with Bullheads in them (we called them mudcats.) We considered them trash fish. I don't know why we never thought about stocking some bass in there just to get after the tiny bream and bullheads. My uncles had 2 bass/bream ponds within a mile of there we could have simply caught a few out of and transferred.