Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding HSB

Hello all. Just joined the forum. My Dad has been a subscriber for a couple of years.

We have a two year old 5 acre pond (20' deep at dam, not many areas less that 3') and stocked the following amounts in 2006:
2250 bluegill – 3-5” -spring
900 red ear 3-5” - spring
675 channel cat 8-11” -spring
45 lbs fathead minnows -spring
450 bass -fall

I was considering buying a feeder and stocking HSB (6-8"). The recommendation was for 50/acre (250 total). The LMB are now 12". Thoughts?
Any concerns that I should have? Is this too many/too little?

Thanks, Scott

Scott, welcome to the PB forum.
You will find lots of good onformation here.

Your main concern should be the possibility of predation by 12 inch LMB.
Make sure your HSB are grown out to a size large enough to prevent them being an expensive snack for your LMB.


http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=11135#Post11135

Welcome Scott to the PB Forum. I agree with George. Find larger HSB to stock and stock about 50. Add a few each year or two as the numbers go down through catching. With a 2 year old pond and fish the fish will be growing fast and the pond nearing carrying capacity. I would not want to remove my first/oldest LMB at 2 years to make room for the HSB. The feeding will help offset the carrying capacity situation but not enough IMO to add 250 adult HSB. You will need to watch your forage situation with more adult predators. Even with feeding pellets the HSB will eat a lot of fish forage also.

Thanks for the info guys. My fishery has 6-8 inches only, nothing larger. So I'm trying to decide on how many to put in.

You know, Scott, this could be a good opportunity to do some fish cage work and grow out those HSB another few inches.

I agree with ewest on the stocking numbers. Trying to predict mortalities of HSB (6-8") due to LMB predation would be difficult, so I would be careful to add less than more. Fifty may be the right number, but I'm not sure I would want more than (50) HSB in a 5-acre pond with an existing fish population. Once those HSB are bigger, look out. A roving pod of (50) big HSB is a crazy thing.

You're scaring me, little brother. I put 50 into an acre in October 2006.

Thanks for the input. We've dropped the pond 4 feet because we are putting in a cabin and 90% of it (the cabin) will be suspended over water. They should be pouring the pilings/foundation in the next few weeks if the weather would warm up. Since the water has dropped we have two arms (8 feet wide, 40 yards long, 3-4 feet deep) that are now completely dry. I plan on fencing off one of the arms since the lake is down and growing out the HSB there. I'm going to do 50 per acre and keep a close eye on them. If I get too many lbs/acre I'll harvest accordingly. Here are a few pictures of the pond (Mike Otto helped us design it). We've dug out the arm by the little pond another 25 yards in length last week. That is the arm which I plan to fence off.

http://s243.photobucket.com/albums/ff73/skrehbiel/?action=view¤t=Farm2.jpg

http://s243.photobucket.com/albums/ff73/skrehbiel/?action=view¤t=Farm1.jpg

First off, welcome to Pond Boss Scott.

Second thanks for the photo links, we love photos. Beautiful place by the way.

Third please take and post photos of the cabin construction. In fact you might want to start a thread about it.

I agree with JHAP! Cabin pics and building story are a must!

My Dad and I have taken pictures of the whole deal. We have everything from buying the land, selecting a pond site, building the dam, building the islands, stocking fish, and building the existing garage. We will also take photos of the cabin construction, which will be suspended above the water. I'll start a thread (A-Z) about the whole deal. It's pretty cool.

Scott

Scott,

Where in Kansas is the pond located? It appears the the pond is well hidden from the road.....that is good! Very nice place ..... the family will enjoy immensely.

Our farm is in Louisburg, KS. About 30 miles south of Kansas City. The pond is completely hidden from the road. Just looks like a corn/bean field with a pasture behind it.

Started a new thread about the whole evolution of our farm.

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=110981&nt=2&fpart=1

Scott

Scott, I love your project - thanks for the report and pictures.
Pertaining to your stocking plans of HSB, I've been down this road before but not having "blocking net" experience, have had "grow out" pond experience.

If your stockers are small enough to warrant a stocking net to avoid predation, I certainly would stock more than 50/acre because your are likely to lose 50% to cannibalism and natural mortality.

I never consider stocking less than 50 HSB/acre with large 8 -10 inch fish in main 2 acre pond and stock 50 fingerlings annually in a 1/4 acre grow-out pond.

Again welcome to the forum.
Keep the pictures and reports coming.
I love Kansas - lots of Krehbiels in Harvey County.

Scott, after reading your entire thread as well as my responses, it dawns on me that I am offering opinions without knowning your true objectives.
Is you goal trophy LMB with accompaning mangement problems, or HSB for sport fishing?

If sport fishing, HSB are much more agressive and harder fighters than LMB without reproduction worries, and not becoming as hook shy as LMB under heavy fishing pressure.

"It all depends"

George, thanks for the input. I respect your opinion as you are one of the HSB gurus on this board. I've decided to put in 50/acre since all I can get is 6" fish.

Scott

We lowered the level of our pond four feet which gave me a chance to put up a net on one of the arms. I plan on putting the HSB in this area and grow them out a few inches. The area is about 12 feet across and 40 yards long. The depth ranges from 2-4 feet. I think I'm going to raise the net about 10 inches as it's a little bit too low. I think I'll also use this opportunity to add some additional structure like Bruce's bluegill condominium and some PVC balls.

We have two small ponds on the property. One is probably 40-50' max across with a max depth of 10' and one tiny one measuring maybe 10' across. We dug out the tiny pond on Wednesday and now it's probably 20' x 30' with a max depth of 3 feet. I am going to add fathead minnows to the larger pond (4lbs) and also to the tiny pond (1 lb). We do have one problem with the 40-50' pond. My Dad and son let a bass and two bluegills in there last summer, so I need to fish them out.



Scott

Here is an overhead photo. The tiny pond is just above the garage in the photo. It's kind of hard to see. It now extends to the trees to the left of it in the photo.



Tiny pond in foreground with 5 acre pond in back.



Digging out Tiny pond.



40' pond.

The lake is almost full again and water is about 2-3 feet in the arm that I have netted off. A little over a week ago, I put in 225 HSB (50/acre) and 1.5 lbs of fathead minnows in this area. They were 6-8 inches.

We went to the fishery and they put them in 5 bags for us and we drove straight to our farm.

I've been throwing a few handfuls of Aquamax 800 at them the last few days, but have yet to see any results. The food just floats on the top. I'm going to (hopefully) get my feeder going this week.

Here are a few photos of my helper, who I picked up at noon from preschool. He was pretty excited (not sure if it was because he got off school early or we were going to a place that had LOTS of fish)and when we were at the fishery, I let him stay in the back of my pickup with the first bag of HSB. I was off to get the others bags and when I came back he had tears running down his face and all of the HSB were flopping in the bed of my truck! He took the rubberband off the bag. We grabbed them all and threw them back in the bag and the guys at Raccoon Valley, filled it back up with water and oxygen. All was well.

Scott

Scott, good help is hard to find and it looks like you have it made.

Congrats Scott- you have a fishin' buddy for sure...
Nice HSB..

George- I've fed four days in a row and haven't seen a sign of the HSB....... In your experience, does it take a while to get them to start hitting the food? I also put in 1.5 lbs of fatheads so maybe they are good with that for now.

Scott

Scott, HSB can be frustrating to get onto feed, especially if fathead minnows are present.
Our first “good” HSB stockers never got feed trained due to a year previous stocking of FHM’s.

The secret is to feed the same amount of feed at the same time, same place every day – IMO an automatic feeder is a necessity.

CC and BG are the easiest to train, but as soon as activity begins the HSB will show up – usually on the outer edges of feed pattern.
The larger they become the more aggressive they become.

I've noticed the same thing with mine. For the first year or two they stayed around cover feeding. Now, they are out competeing my larger CC for food.