Hello,I am from NW Ohio have three ponds.
One is a shallow wetland half acre pond about 3' deep five years old.
Second one is an acre and a half wetland pond with deep ends being 5' deep, five years old. Both of those are for wildlife, bigger one has bass and sunfish and channel cats in it and lots of frogs...smaller has minnows turtles and frogs. Both have wood duck boxes on them that get used multiple times in spring.

Third pond we just put in, over an acre 21' deep for swimming and fishing stone around whole pond. Put a bunch of structure in it in the deep half all either plastic or concrete, other half of pond is for swimming that end is 15'ish deep with a beach. Will be stocking this pond with minnows/bluegill/large and smallmouth/perch/channel cats and a few walleye, maybe one pike.







New pond

Welcome to PB.

You might want to rethink stocking BG. Those swimmer-nipping varmints are a scourge in a swimming pond.

I have to throw Optimal before taking a dip or risk dying of blood loss from a savage bluegill attack.

Welcome to PB forum

Welcome to PB, what Augie said, the BG will pester the crap out of swimmers. beautiful pond btw, the older two are nice shaped for duck hunting.

Never had BG bite me - taste bad?

Thank you all.


I don't want to get bit up! I should have said in the BG family like redear or hybred...need some forage fish for the bass and we like to eat BG.

wonder if you could put minnows etc into your wetland ponds and then scoop em out to add forage to the big pond

I would skip the largemouth and bluegills, even the hybrids for now. Just stock the minnows, Smallmouth, YP/RES. If you will be feeding the fish, you can get some pretty good growth with supplemental feeding. Throw a Texas Hunter Feeder on there along with Optimal Fish food. You can have 13"+ Yellow Perch, RES that are 10"+. If you don't want love to catch/keep/eat Channel Cats I'd skip them too. Make sure you have a phenominal minnow population before stocking the WE.

Hybrid BG can nip too, although not as bad as straight BG. Depending on your goals (bigger bass or bigger panfish) the minnow population becomes very important. I think you will need both Fatheads and Golden Shiners to help support the SMB. IF you can get feed trained SMB, get them.

We will have a limited supply of feed trained SMB this Fall, talk to Steve Heitman @ Shelby Fish Farm to see if he will have any this Fall.

Follow esshup's suggestions and you can always later stock BG-LMB later when you decide you want them in the fishery. You will not be able to easily succeed with the later survival of YP, RES and SMB populations when BG and LMB are already in the pond. YP, RES, and SMB do not compete well with BG-LMB. I and customers have found that HBG nip swimmers more than BG. HBG are more prone to nip because of the green sunfish nature of aggressiveness. Both fish are more prone to nipping the higher their numbers are in the pond.

Nice looking pond, would be fun to follow how this turns out for you... keep us updated with periodic posts of current status...Thanks J

You and me and my whole family.

Couple pics of the two older ponds, those were put into a native grass pasture just too sexy the property up. Had a lot of input from a local state biologist when they were put in, wanted to create a diverse habitat for all kinds of wildlife. We have gotten a ton of enjoyment from them bird watching/duck hunting/frog gigging/fishing/messing with woody boxes and just watching everything that flies/walks/crawls use them from bugs to deer and bald eagles.


The back pond












Front pond

Doesnt get much better then that. complete fun space!

Putting in a plug for my Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/442011656723370/ "Midwest Landowner Wildlife Habitat Enthusiast Network". Seems like few are interested, but maybe it will catch on?

Not to sound cranky or anti change - Facebook Groups can kill a forum. I've been on others where members stop posting because the Facebook Group was easier and one less page / app to open & look at.

Nobody is going to visit my Facebook group instead of this forum. It just is not competitive with what you get here.

I haven't seen any change in the forum member numbers or posts since RAH first referenced the FB group. Despite our best efforts, they're 2 different worlds.

I dont even have Facebook ot I'd join ya on the group.

Rusto you ain’t missing much mostly hate and politics unfortunately... few things are cool
You do get to talk to old friends tho

Thts the only part I would like. Linked up with ol high school (94)buddies. But also dont really want to know their political beliefs either.

I'm not a facebook member but was able to look through the pics...NICE!
I am a habitat junkie too! From bee's to deer, shrubs, flowers,grasses, trees...love messing with all of it. Favorite hobby that I have, it's taken over my love of hunting...almost.

On the subject of nipping bluegills:

I put just ONE bluegill in my 1/2 acre swimming pond from my garden pond, and that little savage beast will track me down in that big pond and nip me.

That big pond Bluegill is probably close to an 8" beast now, where it's partner in the garden pond is still in the 3-4" range, despite being fed regularly.

I wonder if Pumpkin seeds are as bad? Tempted to put them in based on how well that solo Bluegill has done.

Our new pond is half full now! This is what it looked like yesterday, structure is all under water now.



View from beach area





We also planted thirty 5'-6' Black Hill Spruce around pond this past fall for a road screen and wind block

Looks very nice. Hope that the spruce will do better in your local than central Indiana where diseases are taking a lot of them out. We have lost thousands in our former Christmas tree fields (including Black Hills). Being further north, you may be ok.

If there are only a very few of either BG or PS in a pond it is likely (greater than 50%) they will cross.

H2Ofwler I like the dock with the nice sturdy bottom pillars. Have you made a final decision on what to stock? You evidently from your pictures have LMB in one of the other ponds.

Thank You.

Yes, on the stocking we are going very slow and small numbers. I started mid summer as soon as the water started getting deep. In August I put in ten pounds of golden shiners and ten pounds of fat head minnows.






I wasn't sure how they were doing then one day in early fall I saw what I first thought was midges or some other bug emerging along the whole south side of the pond and on closer inspection realized it was hundreds and hundreds of minnows rising. I was glad to see that.




The plan is in late March or early April to do the minnows and shinners again, then a month later to ad 100 small yellow perch and 50 small red ear sunfish.
Then in early fall the minnows again and same amount of perch/sunfish along with 50 large mouth bass 50 small mouth bass fingerling or a little larger and 20 small channel cats.

Spring of 2023 shinners minnows again along with same numbers and size of everything else but no channel cats and ad 20 little walleye and 5 pike.

Spring of 2024 I will ad 50 black crappie.

After that we will see how it goes, for now we are going to go slow with low volume numbers.

In a few years or more as fish get good size we will keep a lot of what we catch to eat, especially the bream.

Asking for a little clarification on your thought process for both SMB and LMB? That plan feels a little like an old fashioned backyard rope pull contest but where you spend half the time pulling on the one team then you race across and pull for all your worth on the other team for a while too. (I don't mean to be a smart aleck) Someone wiser than I can tell you why SMB and LMB don't play well together maybe?

We tend to see a stocking plan that includes LMB as one of your top predators have a different forage base (lots more needed, usually BG to allow multiple spawns per year, and think about adding other forage such as tilapia if allowed) than when the SMB (often not as likely to reproduce) or Walleye or pike are the top predator. Walleye and Pike will not reproduce in a pond except in rare special cases where added engineering is put in.

Channel Cat also are hungry predators and hard to get out once in. I'm sure you have thought this all over.

The redear are great and don't overpopulate as readily. The 100 yellow perch might be all you need especially since you are being patient, preparing plenty of minnows for them to eat ahead of time. The 100 YP will grow like crazy and hopefully lay gobs of eggs the next spring at ice out. If these eggs have a good hatch percentage you will have plenty of new perch and won't need to restock YP in 2023.

With how many people complain about wishing they could have a better control of their BG population and wishing they hadn't started with them, you may consider using RES, YP, minnows, (tilapia?) and then have SMB be your top predator for a while and later add a few bonus walleye or pike as extra predators. Even consider a very unique top predator like gar pike or chain pickerel (you would have to locate in local waters near your pond as these are not in fish farms)

If your hope was to eat some channel cats regularly then adding a few isn't so bad but adding more than a few can decimate your fish populations.

YP are very good eating, and if you don't mind eating RES you may have enough panfish already.

Just creating dialogue since you have set the stage for some really cool 'unique' stocking plans like few others can do.

Keeping things for discussion sake, I like canyon creek's thoughts but also see you have a plan you've thought about in depth.

My pitch would be to wait on the LMB introductions into the pond. In NW Ohio, you'll be able to get healthy advanced sized LMB any time in the future whether it be from a hatchery or privately sourced. As such, I would want the SMB to get as big as possible, as the almost unavoidable takeover of LMB when both LMB and SMB coexist, and maybe sans aggressive management against the same, is bound to happen years down the line. You may find enough enjoyment without the LMB, and I don't think you mentioned Hybrid Striped Bass/HSB which would fit in nicely.

Whatever fish you end up with predator wise, they're going to have a lot to eat with your forage plan.

Thank you for the well thought out responses.

Yes we plan on eating the channel cats once they get some size to them, when/if we stop catching them I will put another small group in. I REALLY like eating lightly breaded clean chunked up catfish cooked in peanut oil!

Even with the water being deep I don't think the small mouth will be sustainable...we will be trying to ad some local crayfish to the pond and that might help some. The large mouth will more than likely be the top bass in the pond. But it would still be nice to catch a smallie now and then for fun.

We love eating big perch! I hope they thrive good in the pond.

I don't think the walleye or pike will be able to ever breed in the pond, when they get good sized we will eat what we catch and replace with small ones again. My reason for them is to help keep the small stuff under control, they are fun to catch and good eating.

I have thought about the hybrid striped bass and think they could sure be a nice ad in small numbers.

Tilapia do fine in my area in the warm months then die off once water gets cold...I sure have no objections to adding them in summer.


My boys love ice fishing so eventually we will be taking fish out in winter too. The goal is to have a nice variety with plenty of forage fish to help sustain the food chain.

Sounds good!

My 2 cents - use your plan without the LMB. Down the road if you want LMB as an extra then use only female LMB (only after large enough to correctly id sex). I would rather have a shot at good SMB, YP, & WE than LMB. One issue might be that SMB and LMB can cross under certain circumstances.

I concur with the majority here. I have found that the SMB will sustain themselves in the pond IF NO LMB ARE STOCKED. Look around on here how to make SMB spawning habitat, they will reproduce in a pond that is as deep as yours. They will have to be harvested once they start spawning just like LMB or they will over eat their food source - seen that happen before.

If you stock LMB, then the SMB and YP population will suffer. SMB because the LMB will out compete them for spawning habitat and the best places to hang out to feed, and the YP because the LMB can eat YP adults.

You can always later, as mentioned, add LMB later but after adding LMB you are stuck with them and the problems they cause with YP, RES and WE until you kill off the pond to start over without LMB. . Get your other species established FIRST. Live with and enjoy them for 4-5 years. Then decide if you really want and need those LMbass. Plus you already have LMB in one of your other ponds. Once you live with SMB I doubt you will want those also known as "green carp" by Bruce Condello.

Agree with Bill -- except these are Bruce's carp.





And in Bruce's tub

I bet Bruce's wife was happy about big common carp in her bath tub.

Feret food ?

I’ve talked with three different fish hatcheries and they are saying that the SM will not breed in my pond, even with the size depth and structure I have?

Kind of confusing.

I would rather just have smallies with perch and red ears as the main fish species for first few years anyway.

I'm not sure why the hatcheries say that SMB won't spawn in your pond.

I think they absolutely will spawn in your pond.

I wonder if the 3 hatcheries you spoke with have any SMB to sell? I’m assuming they do not and are trying to get you to change your plan. It is their job to sell fish after all. Take the advice from the experts on here who have SMB reproducing in either their own or clients ponds not someone is selling fish. Good luck!

There is still a widespread belief that SMB won't even survive in ponds. I tried to get a fisheries biologist from Purdue to come look at my pond because some of their educational material still indicates this. The professor said maybe they could visit sometime to see if I have special conditions that allow my SMB to thrive and spawn. He never did come visit, but perhaps due to the Covid-19 pandemic? Glad you all are providing current scientific knowledge to folks like me!

Horse poopie.

They will spawn providing they have the correct spawning habitat. Thanks to TJ here on the forum I made these for a customer a few years ago. They used them the first year that the water was high enough to cover them.



A standard pallet although the next ones I build will be all from engineered wood to prevent the pallets from rotting away over time. Cover the pallet with 1/2" plastic mesh to prevent the #2 limestone (same size as the rocks around railroad tracks) from falling through the openings in the pallet. Use the cement blocks on the shore side as a backer, I also put a 2x2 piece of wood at the edge of the pallet to hopefully stop the #2's from rolling off the front side. Make the pallet as level as possible in the pond, in 2'-4' of water.

H2Ofowlr

Be very suspect of the advice coming from those 3 fish hatcheries. Those are uninformed workers.

Once you put smallmouth in a pond and NO largemouth bass in the pond and with any sort of sand and or gravel beach materials it is difficult to keep the SMB from spawning. Now what happens to the newly hatched smallie fry is another topic.
The spawning nest site structure developed by TJ (member and moderator) and shown by esshup (member /moderator) is an excellent piece of structure to facilitate spawning of SMB.


Our esteemed fishy professor Dr Dave Willis from South Dakota State Univ always said that SMB will often overpopulate in northern ponds if the SMB are the only predator. Every pond where I've stocked smallmouth bass in Ohio we see reproduction and recruitment. Dr Willis and I wrote an article in Pond Boss magazine Jan-Feb 2013 titled "TALKING POINTS: Smallmouth Bass" where we discussed 19 topics about growing smallmouth bass in ponds. Here are a few highlights from the article:

In northern ponds, smallmouth bass reproduction and survival rate of young bass tends to be quite high. In southern ponds, smallmouth bass year class production is much less consistent and less reliable.
Largemouth bass and smallmouth bass in the same pond typically results in a disappearance of the smallies. The largemouth bass seem to be better competitors in ponds. However, this disappearance does not happen overnight.
Smallmouth bass simply are not as effective of predators as largemouth bass so do not consider them pond equivalents.
A smallmouth bass -- bluegill combination will not be a good idea.
In a pond with smallies alone several research studies have shown more SMB can be raised per acre compared to LMB alone in the pond.

I'm going to add my 2 cents as well..
I can say with confidence, whoever told you smb will not do well or reproduce in a pond, doesn't know enough to be selling fish, period.
Personally, I would have made some calls and ask questions about a species I know nothing about, and would have advised the customer what I learned and where he could obtain them if they are a fit. Not everyone thinks the same way though.
As mentioned above, there are many ways to manage smb in a pond with certain species of other types, but for every other type of species added there is less room for the others. There will be competition, minor, major or somewhere in between.
In my personal pond I stocked smb 4yrs ago and I have 4 yr classes of fish. I have YP, a few BG and RES.
BG are not recommended as smb cannot control their potential reproduction....alone.
I keep a few small walleye in the mix and a few wipers (HSB) to help work on those sunfish, Yeah, they may get some smb too, but numbers seem good, fish are healthy.
It's good you're here because I think there is more experience here when it comes right down to it, than anyone selling fish as their mainstay, for several reasons.
Do your homework on all of this, to include what fish you buy and where.
If I were to add anything to your plan I would suggest you not add anymore FHM or GSH. You can have so much reproduction they can eliminate a bloom and literally become lean, causing a slowdown in reproduction, which will require some predation to get just that part back in balance. Save your money and put it in the direction of other intended species.
To add a second item.. be patient, don't try to make it an instant fishery.

Thanks for the replies!
The hatcheries I talked with do sell SMB, maybe they just wanted to sell me more?

I'm going to take it very slow on the stocking, want to get the forage fish going good before adding top predator's. This spring it will just be FHM and GSH end of this month then in May 50 RES and 100 YP. The pond is pretty big and very deep with plenty of good structure. Next fall the plan is to ad maybe 50 SMB and 50 more RES and 100 more YP.

NO BG EVER.

Then next spring 2023 maybe a dozen small walleye and a couple small pike. I am in no hurry, I've got plenty of time to let the population build up. As the walleye get caught they will be eaten if they have decent size...so will the perch and RES.

Good plan. Walleye at 17" will probably be about the max you want. I pull mine when caught at/over 16". I add a few each fall-as many as I harvest. The HSB rarely show up, maybe 1-2 a year, but they won't reproduce and their gape size limits target forage somewhat.

I started my SMB in a 1 acre pond by adding 10 fish in 2 consecutive years. I have a healthy spawning population now. My other species were YP, GSH, RES, and lake chubsucker. I added FHM at the beginning as well. YP, GSH, and SMB were all fat and happy based on the ones caught through the ice by a friend and his son this winter. Small lake chubsuckers and YP used to wash out the drain during flooding, but i have not seen this since installing a water control box to raise the water level in the pond by 1 foot (emergency spillway has never been used in this pond). I used rocks for my spawning structure based on info provided here. I located my bigger rocks on the deep end to keep the smaller rocks from rolling downhill. My smaller rocks were bigger than the 2" crushed limestone shown above.

I have to ask. What are the carp doing in the bathtub? I'm obviously missing something I just don't know what.

Truly, no one knows. It was a picture someone found. As it's a disturbing image, we started attributing it to certain forum members as a mild abuse.

Well, that's some funny stuff! Thanks!!

I know a hatchery in Michigan that does not sell regular bluegill, only hybrid bluegill, and they also sell LMB to stock in ponds. One pond that I was called to do a consultation on was stocked by that hatchery. The goal for that pond was to grow some 7# LMB. it was a 3 acre pond. That hatchery sold them 900 LMB to stock in the pond @ 5"-7" and sold them 3,000 HBG. They told the owners that they'd have to buy HBG every year to get the LMB to grow.

There are hatcheries that only look out for themselves, not the customers. H2Ofowler, you have come to the correct place to get advice.

The only issue I see with stocking small amounts of fish is that you will have to go pick them up or pay a delivery fee. With the price of fuel now, getting free delivery on small orders just won't happen. I see Jones Fish in Ohio now has a $400 minimum fish order for free delivery, we have a smaller minimum order for free delivery within 75 miles. We don't have the volume of sales that Jones does so we cannot offer that for people that are further away unless a few people get together to order, or the order is a big one. At $5 or more per gallon of diesel, at 10 mpg it gets pretty pricey to deliver fish any distance. It's not only the drive to the pond, but it's the return drive too.

Jones now has a pickup site close to me where they bring orders. I actually prefer to buy from a smaller outfit, but it is a drive. I actually got half of my SMB stockers from each hatchery with hope of getting more diverse genetics, but who knows?

RAH, I've been doing some overtime research on this genetics ghost on SMB with the help of one of our Reg 1 Bio's..
We've ran some DNA testing on a few fish and compared to some from known sources. This is getting real. The more we go forward, the more I find there is less genetic difference. I wanted to try and keep a known genetic line "clean".. what is coming up is fish that have crossed and crossed fine-tune themselves to a certain set of criteria (in each area) more quickly than trying to move a regional fish too far out. The best characteristics are brought out by the environment the fish is growing in. Some prosper, some don't. Those that survive will cross and the most prevalent characteristics will carry on.
Not sure why I've tried to reinvent the wheel but there are most definitely different genetic lines if I've learned nothing else.

Edit: I have found most growers don't know the history of their genetics and get a bit "testy" when you ask.... :-))

Speaking from experience here... you absolutely will want to carefully inspect every RES that you stock to make sure it's not really a BG.

Absolutely correct. The problem is if the "RES" that you purchase to stock is too small to have the RES identifiers, it's an impossible problem.

Same with inspecting every HBG that you stock. I found a half dzn BG in a batch of HBG that I was stocking.

If the pond owner wants only RES I only stock 4"-6" RES to money back guarantee my work. Full money back is cheap compared to having to kill off the pond and starting over.

That's a smart move Bill. My experience was very similar to Augie's..surprisingly, I believe we both got some of our RES stock from the same grower, Greg got BG in his, I got BG and a few BCP in mine..

Or RES/GSF hybrid. I got some of those in some RES I stocked. It was in a small forage pond that had only FHM and RES stocked at the time so i know where the hybrids came from for sure.

For the people that absolutely want a zero BG pond, would it be viable to stock a few pairs of adult RES at the time you do the initial FHM stocking?

If it worked correctly, the adult RES would not effect the FHM population - prior to bass being introduced the next season. The young bass could then slaughter the FHMs and then the young RES, but you would have established your RES population in the pond without the risk of introducing BG?

I started my RES with 25 small fish after examining each one individually. I did this the first year after stocking FHM in my YP/SMB pond. Stocking a few pairs of adult RES seems like another way to go.

Don't be fooled, RES will eat FHM if they are large enough, so will BG.

That's why I feel patience is of utmost importance. Minnows and small sunfish are not the bottom of the food web, They are quite a few steps beyond the beginning. As a new pond "seasons", plants begin to grow, periphyton, phytoplankton, zooplankton, aquatic insects, inverts and other "come with time" critters all come together to create a best case scenario. Things take time to fill the void. The more ponds I mess with in fisheries, the more I realize how impatient I am and was.

I was a lot more patient with my 2nd pond, and am creeping with my 3rd pond. May not live long enough to finish stocking my 4th pond:) I will get FHM in it this spring.

Sometimes patience isn't a good thing. Like when a pond is dug in a wet spot that wasn't sterilized. GSF were in the wet spot and took over the pond, eating all the forage fish and any offspring of the panfish that were stocked. The owner waited too long to stock the predators and the reset button had to be pushed.

esshup,

I know that the RES will eat the FHMs. My question was whether a few large breeder pairs would be enough to disrupt the initial FHM proliferation step for most pond stockings? Specifically, the step where people stock 10# of FHM that turn into a pond full of FHM before the rest of their planned species are stocked.


Snipe,

That leads to your comment. I know that FHM and Lepomis are not the bottom of the food chain. All of the things you mentioned lower in the food chain MUST be established for a new pond to thrive.

However, I frequently see advice to throw in the FHMs when the new pond has barely started to fill and there is only a few feet of water. Has anyone observed a die off of the initial FHM stocking because the food chain below them was not yet established?

Rod, a substantial part of putting in fatheads once you have some water in a new BOW is the sheer existential joy of stocking fish. I just warms the heart so much.

Plus, the fatheads are relatively inexpensive, and mostly, they'll survive.

I would say the same.. if there's a couple of feet of water, get the FHM started. I doubt you will kill any FHM by stocking too early. What they need to survive happens pretty fast, what they need to thrive in that first year takes a period of time. Now, one can fertilize and get a bloom fairly quickly but depending on location, you may be fueling a fire by doing so. If done in stages to allow the process to cycle in a timely fashion, I find the outcome is better and more stable.
In esshup's example, that can be very true, but the only wet spot in anything within 150 miles of me, is where you wet your pants so I don't have to worry about existing species such as that, but it's super solid advise in areas where those conditions exist.

FishinRod:

That depends on the available habitat that the FHM have to reproduce on. As you know, the male guards the nest and keeps the eggs clean by using the tubercles on his head to "brush" them. Now if there are only a few areas that are conductive to FHM reproduction and the RES pick off the male before the eggs hatch, there might be a reduction in the number of eggs hatching, so the FHM population might not grow as fast as it would without the larger RES in there. How's that for a wordy "It depends" answer? LOL

I haven't seen any FHM die off when stocked in a new pond that was still filling.

Update on the fish stocking and progess in the new pond;

Late last spring -2022 we put in,
30 pounds of FHM
1400 GSH two different sizes

Couple weeks later,

25- 4" walleye
150- 3"-5" Perch
100- 4" Red Eared Sunfish
25- 3"-4" Black Crappie

Fed them all summer, the FHM population exploded into millions from grain of rice size to full grown. When we fed we would see all kinds of minnows, some shinners and the perch would dart up fast. The other fish stayed pretty shy. The perch were 6"-7" going into fall.

In early November added 50-4" Small Mouth

Have decided not to add any LMB or CC. In hind sight I wouldn't have added any crappie...but we do like eating them, any caught in the future to small to eat will not go back into the pond. Want SMB and perch to be the main focus.

Looked into maybe adding 10-15 hybrid striped bass but have heard they get pretty agressive eating everything up so crossed them off the list.
Will be adding 400 brooder GS in a couple weeks to be sure to get some spawn this year.

I think the perch should spawn this spring 2023 but am still considering maybe putting another 100 4" in?

The pond has filled up nice and is at the rock line now, has about 5' to go to be full. The water is half way up the beach area and we will be shooting sand a couple inches deep over the pea gravel base in early summer. The corner ledge covered in pea gravel is under a foot of water now.

What habitat do you have in the pond for the Yellow Perch to spawn on? If you feed the fish a good commercial fish food, the HSB will eat the food - they are pellet trained.

This is the habitat we put in;





I don't have the time or the want to feed every day, the HSB were just going to be something to maybe try.

The cover is a little light in the pond, you want to have the cover to equal about 20%-25% of the surface area of the pond. I don't have the time to feed the fish in the pond every day either, that's why I have a solar powered Texas Hunter directional fish feeder on the pond.

I agree for the size of the pond the cover is light. We also built a shelf/ledge into one corner around twenty yards long by twenty feet covered in deep pea gravel that will be around 5’-6’ deep when pond is full. We made a few of the SM spawning beds and added a few large rocks on it. Also have the beach area that is pretty big that starts out two feet deep then slopes down to five feet with a 2’ high stone sand barrier then drops off fast to 15’ that will hopefully supply more spawning space and cover.

Trying to manage it all with my wife’s input that swimming and family recreation is a priority over fishing in this pond. My goal is to try and balance it all and have both. Would love to be able to catch foot long perch and four pound smallies one day from it. Trying to build up the forage base as much as I can to help with that.
We do enjoy feeding the fish by hand but the esthetics are #1 with my wife looking out over the pond so an automatic feeder isn’t going to work. Hopefully I can find a good balance between her ideas of an awesome pond and mine.

You may be able to hide the feeder from sight with some bushes or tall grass. Even with the feeder every time I am at the pond I pull the top off the feeder, grab a handful of food and toss it in the pond. The fish get used to my footsteps coming to the pond and will make V's in the water swimming that way to get a free handout of food. The feeder really helps when I am not able to feed them. I have it set so it feeds 2x day, once in the early morning and again 1 hr before sunset.





The YP grow well on good feed. I feed Optimal feed, a mix of Bluegill and Bass food.

Love the size of those perch! That is exactly what I hope to have some day..


Here is one of the spawning structures I put in on the corner ledge covered in pea gravel, I've got a few of them on it. The pea gravel is 6"-9" deep, ledge will be around 5'-6' deep when full.
.


Here are a couple shots of what the pond looks like as of today, still has five feet to go to be full.







The GS came the other day, put half in this pond and half in the big pond at other farm. Only had one dead from what I saw, pic shows the size.




What do you think of adding more perch this spring? If so how many do you think?

Pond is full, this is how it looks.

Beach/swim area




The whole pond

Very nice

Good thing you made your dock heavy enough that it won't float away now that the pond is full!

Great looking water and I'm a huge fan of the use of the riprap.

I like that the stone is good for little fish/tadpoles/crawdads to hide in also helps keep water clean and slows erosion. My wife just likes the way it looks!

First time ice fishing this pond ever today. Ice is over 6" thick, fishing was just crazy!
Caught dozens and dozens of big fat perch...all catch and release this year, I need them to spawn good this spring.
Saw a few schools of Red Ear on the camera but they weren't having any of it, also some big shiners and some huge crappie...didn't see any of the walleye where we were fishing.



















The fish seem to be growing well, next year we will eat some. This is going to stay a perch/smallie/walleye pond.

Great report about your new pond fishery adventure. Your son will really enjoy catching those fish over then next several years and beyond. Good job of growing some nice fish and reporting back to us. Looking forward to more of your fishery reports.

Back in my day, if we wanted to see fish while ice fishing, we had to get our head cold and wet.

Great report!!!

I forgot to mention all the bullfrog tadpoles that were swimming by the other day on the camera.


After hearimg how good the ice fishing was my oldest son came up Saturday afternoon to geta look at the perch. It was cold...the wind chilled us out after an hour.The holes would slush and freeze over in just a few minutes.
Ice was around 8" or better, we started out without much luck didn't have the fish finder or camera like the youngest son did so were fishing old school. We moved over just off the big rock pile on bottom where we caught them the other day and it was on. All were nice, fast action.







And then I caught this one! My personal best ever, I have never even seen one this big caught in person before. 12"



The sunrise and sunsets over the pond are just spectacular...Saturday night.




Two years ago we stocked 150 4"-6" perch in pond and the youngest son threw in a dozen that were around 9" last spring. I try and hand feed everery morning and evening during the warm months off the dock when I can and they come up like piranhas.They quit coming up to feed in early October when it started getting cold. I can't wait to see what they are like a couple years from now. We are planning on doing some type of slot limit on the harvest late fall or next winter, maybe keep 9"-11" to eat and bigger and smaller will go back?

I'll let Dr. Perca make the ultimate recommendation here but the 9-11 sounds reasonable but I believe there will be an abundance of males well under that (5-8"maybe) not sure how the 9-11 would/could skew the numbers.
See what Cody thinks.

Ice fishing next winter and maybe even in summer/fall we should be able to about sex them as we catch them? I'm all for thinning the males down, then after a couple years using the 9-11 slot just release the big females keep big males?
Goal is to have plenty of perch fry for recruitment and for SMB to eat up.
Our original stocking in this pond wasn't very big wanted to give them room to grow. We also have a pretty good FHM and GSH population of all sizes I saw big schools in beach area all summer, along with crawdads and bullfrog tadpoles. .

H20,
with the help of some guides and pictures from this forum I felt pretty comfortable sexing perch especially in the late fall when the egg sac helps confirm females. This link used to show good diagrams and pictures of what the urogenital pore looked like. But photobucket has taken our pictures hostage and added a watermark so sadly the pictures are distorted. There probably are other threads in the archives with better pictures of YP anatomy but with wintertime YP you should be able to confidently separate male from female.

Your YP look very healthy and happy. I'm curious what is in their stomachs if you decide to release to the grease.

see this link:

https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=375752

Thanks, very informative link.

First winter with pond full and the sunrise and sunset pics this time of year over the pond are pretty neat.

Awesome!!!