Ponddragon,

Thank you for sharing more about your pond. To be sure, how many GSF you should mark and how many LMB you should have, will depend on what weight of GSF your pond can support. To be clear, I didn't know what it would be and so the rec as a starting place assumes your pond would support 300 lbs of GSF without a predator fish. With a good balance of predators and prey, such a pond would support about half that weight in GSF > 3". A good predator balance will correspond with standing weights of GSF that are significantly below what pond foods would maintain. So in such a pond, 150 lbs of GSF could be maintained all the time even while producing 150 lbs of prey that are being consumed by the predators. What weight of predators could be supported on 150 lbs/acre of GSF consumption at your location? Around 37 lbs/acre.

But you voice concerns about having that much carry. To give you better rec on numbers that are appropriate for your pond's productivity, we need to have a better understanding of what your standing weight of GSF is. I would recommend marking what you can. You can always remove marked fish if we determine you don't have very many. So to start ... mark 40 or 50. Stop using minnows and go to earthworms and maybe try a multiple hook rig (as 4CP recommended) to improve catch numbers. Use size 10 hooks. After marking releasing 40 or 50 GSF, then let's use the mark and recapture method to estimate the total population. This entails recording catches and whether the fish was marked or not. From this, let's make an estimate of total population. Using that estimate of total population and your population structure metrics lets gain an understanding of your standing weight with your current mix of predators. With this discovery, we can make a better recommendation for GSF and LMB population numbers. Population numbers that are not only a good balance of BG and LMB but also a good balance of populations and pond productivity.

I assumed a population that fits 300 lbs of GSF biomass and your population metrics in the spreadsheet below. Conversely, we could use mark and recapture to estimate the population and combine it with your population metrics to make a better estimate of your standing weight of GSF. What we would want to do then is to goal a smaller standing weight of GSF. We can speak about that later, but for now, if your pond's standing weight is significantly below what I had earlier assumed, we need more discovery.

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