I stocked 40 pounds of minnows in a new 2 acre pond. Mostly shiners with some Dace and Bluntnose. The minnows are surrounding and nibbling at people as they swim. It doesn’t hurt, but is a bit annoying, and we’re worried it might scare away people from swimming in the pond.

The pond is new so there isn’t much life in it yet, so I wonder if the minnows are just overly hungry. Given this my thoughts are to 1) feed them before people want to swim 2) put some predators in so they can’t just “hang out in the open” around swimmers, or 3) get rid of them and put in feed trained predator fish (likely SMB, although was hoping for WE too).

Any advice on what we might do? Swimming is the top priority for the pond, followed by fishing.

Fancy spas charge big dollars for folks to put their feet into tanks containing minnows. The minnows nibble off the dead skin.

So make lemonade from lemons: Tell people they are getting fancy spa treatment for free!

I would try feeding them first. If you remove them, then the predators that you stock will have nothing to eat.

I suspect the minnow nibbling will go way down after predator fish are in the pond for a season or two...UNLESS you stock HBG or straight BG. Those pan fish have a tendency to nibble too and it verges on being more of a bite than a spa treatment...lol

tell swimmers not to use any sunscreen with coconut oil. Same thing happened to my wife in St. Thomas on vacation one year, the folks at the hotel said fish are attracted to coconut oil sunscreen. Maybe its the same with the finny little minnows.

In my pond, feeding before swimming mostly eliminates the piranhagills urge to consume human flesh.

From a swimming perspective, and leaving out any kind of nibbling fish, I would rather swim in water that didn't have residual feed oils in it.

You mean you don't like swimming in a chum slick? LOL

Probably nibbling on hairs. Shave yourself and your swimmers completely bald of body hair. This will guarantee nobody complaining about minnows. Grin!

Thanks everyone. We never planned to stock BG (northern pond), but we definitely won’t after this.

Does anyone know if this has a chance of “getting better with time” on its own, as there is more life in the pond for the minnows to eat on elsewhere? Or should we expect this to be the experience going forward, or at least until we add predator fish?

It will get better in short order when you add predator fish. Minnows that are swimming around in the water column where they would interact with swimmers will be bioconverted to predator fish mass.

I do try to avoid it when possible...

Being afraid of minnows… city folk will never stop surprising me. Add a few predator fish and the minnows will hike to the shallows. When forage fish get eaten they release disturbance cues to other minnows and they will change their behavior accordingly. Before I had predators I had fat head minnows in open water all the time.

I went for a swim in my pond yesterday late afternoon to cool off from a day's work outside. The small BG were having a nibbling spree, first time this year they've bit on me. While it doesn't hurt, they do give you a thump and it's annoying. I just kept up some light leg movement while I wallowed around in the deep water and that kept them away. However, despite my movements, a huge monster snapper surfaced about 5 ft. away from me and I've never had that happen. That made me a bit uncomfortable to say the least. I'd hate to have one of those nibble on me.

The more bass predators of various sizes that you have in the pond the nibbling fish will become fewer and fewer.

This all sounds promising. Perhaps I will need to move up my bass stocking timeline, maybe with just a few for now so that the minnows can keep proliferating, but are kept out of the open water around the dock.

Ive switched over to skinny dipping,, or chunky dunking as it may be called later in life,, scare the crap out of the fish,, they gone from the area in no time.

I sure hope that SherWood's monster snapper turtle doesn't wander over to your pond!

Maybe it's time to check out some turtle soup recipes.