Hi all
I am planning to build a new small pond to breed forage fish and to let my little kids and their friends have fun fishing them.
I was thinking about a hole about 50x50 ft, max deep 10 ft.
Of course it should be safe for children, and I would like a quart of the bank could be planted with lilipads, but in a way they can't invade all the banks.
Could you help me planning the project/layout of the pond? Any of you experts could give me a sketch of how to achieve it? Do I need also some gravel zones and/or rock piles?
Thank you in advance for your hints.

Ok, this spring I will finally dig the forage pond. It will have a square shape with rounded corners and in section it will be like the pic (the measurements are in feet). A liner will be placed to cover the deepest part and the slopes up to the step. The step will be more than 3 feet wide and covered with crushed stone and the water, at that point, will never be deeper than 2' thanks to an overflow pipe. I hope this makes the pond safe for my younger children (3 years old) and their friends too. They will never be left alone, of course, but it is always better to be as careful as possible.
As fish I will put PS and Rudd (a fish very similar to your GS) and, maybe, 1 LMB as bonus fish, to always have forage fish available for the other pond and to start making my twins fish.
I'm no more so convinced about lilipads, maybe I'll put some potted on the step, just to give some vegetation for the fry.
What do you think?

image sharing

Do you plan on putting in some cover besides the lilly pads? That would be my suggestion is to add more cover. But also when you get kids fishing you dont want many hangups. It gets them outta the mood really quick when they spend more time snagged than catching.

How do you plan on catching the forage fish to move to the other pond?

I have the same question about cover. Too much, especially wood, and it might be difficult to net the forage fish. Most forage ponds are deliberately built with little or no cover for this reason.

Thank you for your interest.
No other covers except some potted lilipads (removable if needed) on one side. As RS said kids need to fish without problems of hangups.
I ll catch forage fish mainly with cast net and fish traps.

Don't know if there is anything of interest in this old thread, but it has a lot of links to other specialty ponds including forage ponds.

Old thread with links to other threads about specialty ponds

Thank you snrub.
Great job!

Filippo, take a look at the top few pictures at the beginning of this thread. Simple way to add and remove dense cover as needed, and I use it for FHM cover in my hatchery pond. Drag the brick to the shoreline and flip the limbs over. When you want them out, just pull the brick up the bank, or wade in and flip the limbs back over. Quick, cheap, and easy.
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.ph...true#Post515342

Lilies are great cover, but be diligent in your selection if you go that way. With your temperate climate there not may be an actual "season" for them since the minimum temps may stay high enough to have a longer annual growing season. If so, they could spread quicker than you may want. Also, the actual diameter of all the lily stalks may only be 7-8 centimeters for the area you're talking about. Lilies provide shade, but there may better choices for actual fish cover.

Plastic tubs work well for planting lilies.

Thank you Fire for your hint.
I'll surely follow your method if needed.
I need to understand first what are the Rudd needs for best reproduction. I know PS make nests on gravel beds, but I've read that Rudd lay the eggs making them adhere to acquatic vegetation. I'll try to understand if they are more "comfortable" with soft lilies stalks or with rigid branches' twigs.

About lilies I have a little 4000 gallons pond dug in 2015 for my daughters and their red fish and it led me to a passion for lilies. Now I have about 50 different varieties of waterlilies in it. At this latitude they go dormancy from november to april, but as you say they must be managed carefully or become quickly invasive. In my little pond every single rhizome is planted in a black bucket and every year it needs to be explanted, dissected and replanted (only the best one) because they grow and sprout alot and "escape" from the bucket.

I'm thinking of trying to put bare-root lilies in the forage pond, simply tied to a weight to prevent them from floating and going around, to maximize their phyto-purifying effect. My biggest fear is that the water, with so many fish, will become too rich in nutrients and therefore fill up with algae.
Done some math and the forage pond will be a 1/15 of acre and about 100k gallons. Probably it won't be aerated and fish will be pellet feeded so I'm worried about eutrophication.

If the Rudd are like our Golden Shiners, they reproduce by broadcasting their eggs over short vegetation in shallow water - think of 6" tall grass on the bottom of the pond in 1'-3' water.

If you wanted to remove a larger amount of forage fish at once, and had a way to remove and replace water in the pond, you could make it in the shape of a paint roller tray with a gentle slope round the edge until 3' water depth, then quickly transition to the paint roller tray shape.

Partially drain the pond down past the first slope and use a seine that went completely across the pond, pulling it from deep to shallow end.

Thank you esshup.
I found this https://nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/factsheet.aspx?SpeciesID=648
Seems that rudd could be found in many of the USA.
The article says "Reproduction occurs from April to August. Adhesive eggs are laid among vegetation. Fecundity ranges from 3500–232000 eggs" so I guess I need some more vegetation.

I have already read your good advice on shaping it as a paint roller tray to facilitate netting in a snrub thread, but my intention is to remove some fish every week or so (cast net or fish trap mainly) to put them in the bigger pond as supplemental feeding in addition to pellet and the already present preys.
If in the future I'll need to remove most of the fish quickly, I think that lowering the water the current shape will concentrate them in the central part (inverted truncated pyramid).

You are welcome! They even make spawning mats for fish like that, but I haven't looked where to get them, not know what they cost.

That is pretty much what I used my forage pond for. I mostly used minnow traps daily. I would collect the FHM in a couple traps and transfer them to other ponds. I used a cast net a lot to collect RES fingerlings to supplemental stock my other ponds. I think it worked quite well for my entertainment and learning about fish. It was never meant to be anything commercial or goal orientated. Just mostly something to do and experiment with.

The forage pond is now full of FHM with the intention of getting some HSB fry this year and raising them to a size to stock my other ponds. Again, more of an experiment than anything else. Something to entertain me in my retirement.