Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Help with forage base!

My dam was just finished this week on a new pond in northern Kentucky. I’m hopeful that it holds water and I’m excited to start creating a food chain. The pond is 1/2 acre and 18 feet deep in one tiny little spot right at the base of the dam. The goal is to make it a RES and SMB pond. As soon as it has water, my plan WAS to stock FHM and give them the summer to proliferate. In addition, I was planning to transplant a bunch of rusty crayfish from the creek at the bottom of the property into the pond. I know rusty crayfish are the devil, but they are the native species here so I don’t see any harm in expediting the inevitable.

The problem is this: No local hatcheries have any FHM.

I was considering gambusia instead and then ordering a double dose of FHM to stock in the fall with RES/SMB? Does this seem reasonable? Am I missing a better solution? Does anyone have a secret source of FHM reasonably close to the Cincinnati area?

Bait shop

Throw the fatheads in now. If you want to get some underwater plants established in the pond, I would wait on stocking the crayfish.

As mentioned above, and strongly seconded from experience, do NOT add craws until Bass are at least 10" average, maybe even a bit larger.. 5-6 doz FHM will fill a void you can't believe until you witness it.
I haven't heard any numbers of stocking so I'll add my 2 cents.. If you have 4' of water and increasing volume I'd be inclined to stock 50 RES of 3-5" size. Next spring stock 150 more.
If you are 75% full come fall (or greater) start with 20-25 6-8" smb if available, they will likely pull off a spawn next year.
Next fall add another 20-25 smb of the same size. Dropping the number of SMB stocking will increase growth rates and give the forage base a chance at holding a high enough volume to allow the second stocking of SMB to grow rapidly. This should provide a diverse size range of SMB with all having better than average growth rates-depending on how suitable the structure and habitat are.

With just or only RES, as not real prolific fish, with SMB,,,,, the smallies will not grow very large as an average size. Both will do okay just the SMB will not get much larger than 14"-15" unless only a few SMB are present to allow for more preyfish for each bass. Then the smb should grow to larger sizes.