Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Planning New Pond in Northern Waters

I am expecting to have a 1-1/4 acre pond by summer and thinking about a stocking plan, and could use some advice/insight. My wife wants primarily a sunset/water lilly pond and I am hoping for a place my 7 grandchildren, six of them boys, can fish and swim. We are not looking for trophy fish but would like some good eating.

This is a somewhat northern pond and we typically get 10-15 below and 7-12” of ice on the small lakes near us but the water will probably be too warm for trout as we will only be 9-10’ deep. My thoughts are to stock:

this summer GS, Pumpkin seed, YP
next spring SMB

Are there prior posts on this exact combination? I know that shiners are nest raiders and will eventually get too large for either the YP or the SMB to eat. I hope this will help keep the pond from getting overcrowded with large preditors. The PS are easy to catch and will be great for young beginners, as well as the benefit of eating snails and such. I plan on having spawning beds for the PS and SMB and the lilies plus eel grass, if we can get it to transplant, will be there for GS and YP.

I would also like advice on adding paper shell crayfish; pluses or minuses in northern waters.

I plan to harvest as needed, and especially YP and SMB for dinner, but do not want this pond to require a lot of management. I also plan to aerate at some pont.

Your advice, previous posts, etc. are appreciated.

If you have decent shoreline woody cover in a back area of the pond the FHM might be able to maintain a resident minimal population. Get eelgrass established first before adding papershell crayfish in years 2 or 3. Add SMB fingerlings after the 1st YP spawn.
Use rocky / broken construction waste concrete sizeable lengthy areas preferably downwind shores for papershell habitat. PM me for some beneficial eelgrass seed plants. I would allow the SMB to become established with one spawn before adding the PS to minimize their overpopulation. IMO first stocking of PS could be mature sizes of 4"-5" and around 20-50 of them should get the population started with their first spawn. Do you plan to get the PS from a fish farm or wild caught? If you get eelgrass established / planted at 1st pond filling, I would check out some local streams for trapping and transplanting some bluntnose minnows(BNM) which should be a very common creek species in NY. BNM are easy to catch in bread baited drab colored Gee minnow traps. The 3 main small fish to definitely avoid in creek minnow transfer are carp, bullheads, green sunfish and any sunfish. Very few stream shiners will spawn in your pond except goldens, spotfins and satinfins. Spotfins & satinfin are sparse in the FingerLks streams and good to have in the pond if you trap some.. Creek chubs will grow big and eat fish fry in your pond but will not spawn. I don't think any of the chubs or dace in the Finger Lk area will spawn in your pond; although never a problem if they do and will serve as diversifying the forage. Trench, Rudd and Bitterling do not occur in FingerLK area so no problem with them. .

see this for locations of BNM in NY.
https://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/94469.html

See this good distribution map for the minnows of NY.
https://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/85663.html

At this point do your best to stock YP at 4"-6" this fall because the 2"-3" YP received July 12 were likely mostly all the small ones and males from the 2022 year class. 4"-6" in fall could be a mixed gender ratio. Ask about year hatched when you buy them - you want 2023 year class of YP. The length of the 100 YP from Zetts in Sept (hook and line) will be an indication how well they are growing. If in Sep-Oct they are 5"-6" they were 2023 hatchlings; smaller - then runts form 2022. 6" YP bought in fall 2023 will produce spawn in 2024.

Daphnia were probably already present in the pond, however adding some will not be a waste of money. If the pond was not turbid muddy then the hay was not needed to have Daphnia succeed. Shiners as open water fish will eat a lot of Daphnia and keep the population pretty suppressed. After several years the original stocked shiners at 8"-9" may become pests and have to have a focused harvest. These big shiners can be hand-fed to the SMB by removing tails from the shiners so bass can easily catch them. Entertaining way to grow really big SMB.

If you can locate some SMB this fall as fingerlings, I would stock around 10-15 to get them well established on the abundant minnow population. Then in 2024 you can add 20-30 more to have two initial stocker year classes so the pond has a good SMB size distribution of predators.

At this point I would not add PS until the bass are well established and have spawned the first time. This will help reduce chances of them becoming over abundant as noted by esshup above. . With your habitat conditions the YP and GSH could easily sustain the SMB population if the SMB are not allowed to over populate. Just several adult SMB can put a lot of predation pressure on the YP & and smaller GSH. Lots of GSH can be somewhat of a problem. Later if you want PS you can add some PS when bass are established and reproducing.

Nice looking plan for the new pond. Plenty of rock/stone/concrete will create lots of good habitat. for small fishes. It will be interesting to see how your pond progresses and matures as time passes. Please keep us updated. We can learn lots of good things from your pond adventures. There are all sorts of 'natural' pathways that stream minnows can find their way into a pond. "Nature has its ways".

Stream chubs that rarely spawn in ponds, especially the large mature creek chubs (8"-10") have little benefit in ponds except for being soft rayed forage fish for big predators. Small adult size chubs in the Fingerlakes area are always good prey fish for SMB. Do good homework recognizing local stream minnow type fishes. Good, clear, close, side view pictures from your catches and we can help identify things caught in a minnow trap/s. Minnows freshly dead are easiest to photograph. also good are pictures of fish in a zip loc bag with a small thin wall amount of water between the two walls of the bag.

Here are some good pictures of what the very common bluntnose minnow looks like. Notice the rounded nose, dark lateral body stripe, and the prominent black spot at the tail end. BNM will thrive very well in a pond such as you are planning. It also grows real well in small lakes with good refuge habitat
http://fishesofboneyardcreek.weebly.com/bluntnose-minnow.html

https://gallery.nanfa.org/v/members...notatus+Bluntnose+Minnow+4677ws.JPG.html

https://tnacifin.com/fish/bluntnose-minnow/

https://therouge.org/bluntnose-minnow/