Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Golden Shiners

Put in a new pond last year, a little over an acre over 20' at deep end 15' at shallow end. We added lots of good artificial structure in the deep end.
Pond is 3/4 full now, last fall I added ten or twenty pounds of fathead minnows.

Late this spring I added;

Another 20 pounds of fathead minnows
150 3" yellow perch
100 3" red eared sunfish
25 3" black crappie
25 6" walleye

I am feeding pellets at the pond a few times a week. The minnows have definitely spawned a couple times...lots of little fish fry around edges.

Plan is to add 50 4"-6" smallmouth this fall and 15 5" Hybrid striped bass next spring.


Is there any downside to adding ten or fifteen pounds of 2"-3" golden shiners now? Is there any chance of shiners causing any problems?

The fish our family are most interested in are the smallmouths and perch, but everything will be on the menu.

So I ordered some minnow size and some 4" size last week. Overnight they were delivered to my door by noon next day! Technology kicks butt...I guess they drug them to make them sleepy fill bag with oxygen then put them in an insulated bag with ice packs.
Took them out to pond floated them in shade for almost a half hour then turned them loose and off they went. Had maybe twenty of the bigger ones dead and maybe five of the smaller...not bad for over 1400 shiners

Some pics to show how it went and the size:

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Hopefully in the next year or so they will look like this and be self sustaining keeping the SMB happy.

I'd add them, you will need vegetation in shallow water for them to spawn on. The Crappie will need the small fish to eat. If it was my pond, I'd yank all of the crappie out asap.

I have had great success with GSH, there are some 5-6 ones in there after 3 years but they really deliver the forage for the SMB, YP, HBG and HSB. My pond is around 1/3 of and acre and it is full offspring, I can sit on the porch all day and watch random predators grabbing snacks. I think they're worth it over FHM if they have a place to hide and you mentioned structure is available.