Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Bowfin stocking or walleye for wv pond

I have a farm with 5 ponds, just built a new 0.9 acre max depth 15 feet with structure on one half the other reserved for swimming etc. hard pack earth bottom, small section will have gravel for fish breeding. Partial spring fed , not a lot of shade between 10 am and an hour before dark but nice vegetation around. Suspect max water temp in summer here in that cool valley probably mid to high 70. My other ponds have generic farm pond fish- bass bluegill crappie catfish etc. I once caught a bowfin and it was my favorite fight of all time. I have thought about doing something bizarre with this pond like bowfin/perch or maybe given depth even trying walleye perch with a couple bowfin thrown in. Does anyone have experience with bowfin and or know where to get some? Any other suggestions on an atypical fun stocking welcome- not dead set on anything as long as it's different than the others. It has a protected watershed and no ponds upstream for runoff of other fish. Pic attached, but it's full now

Welcome to Pond Boss!!

I've never heard of a fishery selling bowfin, but that does not mean there are none.

Short of that, hand stocking would be the other option, although I'm not sure how you would target for bowfin when fishing.

You may also want to consider Saugeye as an option. One of our members, Snipe, has been growing them, and does ship them, I think.

For a different type of fishery for your new 0,9 ac pond, consider using shiners, crappie and hybrid striped bass. You can add and reduce number of HSB as needed to keep the crappie numbers at density to meet your goals for average size of crappie.

For bowfin do your diligent homework for how they spawn, habitat they use for spawning and you don't want them overpopulating. They have a decent size largish mouth with teeth so they are definitely predatory. Not known much about them I would not want more than one in my small pond as predator; similar to a tiger musky usual density. I have caught two of them and they are hard fighters. Best chance of getting them for stocking is IMO bucket stocking. One of them I caught in a clean walleye lake. We cleaned it and fillets were light brown tan. Not sure we ate it because we had fresh walleye to eat.

Like Bill's suggestion with SMB as a bonus fish. Good reports on ponds using shiners, crappie and hybrid striped bass plus SMB.