My dad and I have a pond a little over a 1/2 acre in southern PA. I have done a bit of research and have decided to try to make it a YP pond that can last a long time and maybe harvest 5 fish a year from, but mainly be catch and release. It is on average around 5 ft deep and 10 in one section. I was thinking of stocking FHM this fall and next spring stock 4"-6" fingerling YP and feeding them pellets until they are around 10" and try to wain them off the pellets and get them to eat the FHM. Would that work? And would I need a predator like CC or LMB to keep them from overpopulating and becoming stunted?I know LMB will eat a lot of perch. Or should I just stock with YP and FHM? Also the # of each species to stock would be nice to know. Any other suggestions on stocking or anything else are also welcomed.
Put the FHM in now. let them make babies!!! You want to only harvest five fish a year?? it does sound like a small pond but you should be able to do better than that. They will take advantage of the pellets and the minnows so long as there are both and they know how to eat pellets. Perch has instincts to eat minnows though. Do you have another pond to take fatheads from for food or have habbitat in your pond for the minnow to survive??
This might be a good pond for you to try and stock single sex. Females get bigger. Just a thought, Half an acre is small and you could manage it with out another top predator but maybe one or two would help. I would suggest to single sex some male LMB as they will target the smaller perch and the CC will get huge and may try and eat some more desirable sized fish. Just some thoughts and people with more experience will "chime" in.
Sorry about that but I dont really want it to be a fishery. I should have used a different word choice. Id mostly like to catch and release and only harvest a few fish a year. Id like the YP to spawn so thats why I wondered about predators for future populations. And thanks.
I heard FHM spawn in vegetation, logs, etc. instead of pebble beds/gravel. So I have good structure and vegetation so they should be able to spawn and also hide when the perch get in there
Ya cool. experiments are fun. Pellet trained fish are fun to watch.
Sounds like the FHM have some of the habbitat, the predators are hard on them though.
Keep us posted on what it is you do. There is no wrong way to stock a pond.
For sport fishing I would go large or small mouth bass for sure. Great fun to catch. Perch could be the feed for small mouth bass, or crappy for the large mouth. I am no expert and have been told that crappy are allot of work if you do not have good predators to eat them up.
I went with a perch pond with the hopes to stock a few walleye as a bonus fish. Our pond is for some good eating more then sport.
If I was to do it for sport I would go with the small mouth bass and perch with a well started minnow population.
Again do not make your decision on my thoughts above. Just giving you an option that I would ask the experts about.
Cheers Don.
The plan of stocking pellet trained YP then withdrawing pellets after a year has an inherent problem. I have seen this done with just female YP and most or many of the YP starve despite presence of abundant minnows (FHM and bluntnose). I consider YP sort of a dumb fish and they do not seem to be abl to easily convert to minnow food once the adults are habituated to pellets. If the YP are spawning then the youngster YP will grow up eating natural foods. Since your harvest goal is small 5-8 fish per year & you don't want to feed pellets after the first year, I suggest you have two good options. I list the options in order of chances of success.
1. Stock just female YP that are not pellet trained. This is the simplest, low hassle method, with best chance of good success with high quality YP. No over population concerns. Restock numbers that are harvested. When minnows are sparse remove more perch. When minnows are always apparent - abundant and YP are in good body condition and growing, you can add a few extra female YP when resocking. Fender's Fish Hatchery & LLama Farm near Baltic OH in SE OH should be able to provide obvious female YP (with eggs) in mid March.
2. Stock minnows/shiners (spring) and in fall or next spring - May, mixed sex YP 4"-8". In spring of next year after the first spawn of YP stock a few (5-8) HSB or walleye. Neither specie will reproduce and you have a good control of how many small perch & minnows are consumed each year based on number of predators that are present. When perch caught are mostly smaller sized then add more HSB or WE so they consume more YP. As a general rule, when fishing live bait for YP you should be catching at least 50% YP larger than 8" long. More smaller ones means not enough predators and when catching mostly (90-95%)YP larger than 8" you have too many predators. Minnows should also be sparse when catching mostly all large perch. This situation can be acceptable if you are willing to restock larger sized YP to replace those harvested. For good success with this plan you will need to monitor the fish balance and body condition to maintain good growth. This plan requires more management fishery knowledge and effort compared to Option 1.
IMO - There are other fish combination stocking options that could work better than the YP plan. Substitute HBG (pellet 1 yr) instead of YP. Use smallmouth as predator. I think the HBG are more likely to switch from pellets to natural foods compared to YP.