There have been a few threads recently about the stocking plans of days gone by. The official stance of the various State departments of natural resources is that in northern ponds you do minnows, bluegills, LMB and catfish. We have many threads indicating that this is standard is not necessarily good for smaller northern ponds due to how quickly the pond gets predator 'heavy' with the LMB and the channel cats eating everything in a certain size class. Then the struggle becomes trying to fine enough forage for the LMB which continue to multiply. You end up with skinny 12" bass and stunted bug-eyed bluegill.

If your goal is growing large LMB then you would start you pond way differently than if your goal is to have a large bluegill pond. The most powerful tool you have right now is that it IS (or mostly is) a blank slate. It would be helpful to find out what those minnows are as I assume they are still in the pond. If you truly want the best possible advantage in creating your stocking plan and having control over it, you would actually apply sufficient lime (or rotenone which is expensive) to be sure all fish are dead. This is best done when water levels are their lowest to save you on cost of chemicals.

IF you start with fresh water and no fish then you can decide which kind of bait fish go in first. The little critters like scuds, insects, dragonfly larvae, waterboatmen, etc will all find their own way in. Even if you could be patient from spring till next fall and let forage do their thing it would be awesome.

Consider if you see crayfish as something you desire. They may be able to be sourced in nearby streams or lakes. Often to keep them in your pond once predators are in place you need to create habitat like an area of larger stone rip-rap for them to hide in. The double edged sword is always achieving balance. A few pond owners created lots of rip-rap and the crayfish survived so well that the pond was muddy and not a speck of vegetation. Then the challenge was trapping crayfish and these folks reported trapping thousands and not making a dent in the problem.

You can't go wrong with FHM. Giving them a chance to reproduce by laying eggs on the underside of floating boards, old garage doors panels, or letting some pallets slowly water log and sink while no predators in place would be great. Predators will otherwise remove your FHM in a pond that does not yet have much cover of plants or artificial structure.

Adding them once predators are in will cost money and each load of fish will last about a week and be consumed.

I have had more success with shiners. I have tried golden shiners and later spotfin shiners. I like the SFS much better. They have no problems surviving predation and are the first to show up at ice out when the hand feeding of pellets starts up. They are hardy, fast swimmers, and can pull off a few spawns once water temps rise. They do require special spawning structures which you can easily make with help of threads and pictures on this forum.

Please share your goals for stocking and we can help you. If you find out there actually are bluegill in your pond already then you either have to zero the bluegill population, or you have to assume the bluegill are already out of balance and will have to put predators in earlier. The predator does NOT have to be LMB but LMB are one of the best management tools once you have a reproducing bluegill population.

It sounds like you will live onsite? Do you plan to pellet feed? Do you have electricity by the pond so you can run aeration?

Great days lie ahead...