Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose would I be crazy.....

stocking 3" to 5" SMB, YP, RES & 25 lbs. of FH this fall in my 2/3 acre pond? I'm leaning towards 50 SMB, 400 YP & 75 RES. Does this seem ok? thanks

What kind of growth do you want out of the smallies? Size? For eating?

I guess a question would be what you want out of the YP also? Size, eating?

I would like some big smallies but not for eating, I would like to have some perch dinners without re-stocking. 10" ers and up. I ordered the FH's and they will deliver in a couple of weeks. Everyone selling fish claim it would be ok, if not better, to match the sizes and stock them all at one time.

I found a DF-125 feeder on CL like new for $125 so I will be feeding. That being said, can I increase the amount of YP? Thanks

How big are the YP that you can get?

2"-3" are 25 cents & 3"-4" are 50 cents. SMB are 3"-4" @ $1.80 & RES 3"-4" @ 50 cents. The YP & RES are pellet trained.

This is from a supplier in Oh.

Size Price each
2-4" $1.35
4-6" $2.05
6-8" $3.85
8-10" $7.50

Quite a difference in prices!!

OK, if you want to go w/ some smaller YP, then I might go with 400-500 YP and some amount of RES first. Maybe 50 RES???

I would pellet feed hard for 8-12 months.

Then I would get the biggest smallies I could, hopefully 5" or bigger, and maybe put 30-40 in.

Keep pellet feeding hard.

You might be able to get a 2-4" YP to 10" in 12+ months with heavy feeding (someone correct me if I'm wrong), and at 10", you'd start getting YP spawns I would think.

If you started culling YP at 10" or abouts, you might have control over their numbers along with the help from the smallies.

These are just some rough out thoughts.

I like Sunil's, esp waiting on the SMB. If you want lots of fast growth on the SMB which also means they will have a good chance of reaching their greatest potential size, waiting until you have lots of forage to stock them should do it. But then I'm not a big fan of stocking everything at once.

Thanks! Why would you wait on the SMB? My thought was, more FH could make it through and spawn with smaller SMB. I understand that with no SMB the numbers would be higher but would 50 SMB, in the 3-4" range do that much damage? Will the YP stop eating pellets after going all winter without being feed due to ice?


I've been shopping!

IME if you give small SMB FHM to eat, they rapidly become much larger SMB and want to eat even more FHM.

I have never heard of anyone pellet training RES. The RES's unwillingness to eat pellets is why it's darn near impossible to find any over 4 inches.

RES can be feed trained. There are studies where it was done (same process as with BG) and others here have done it repeatedly. RES are not as easily feed trained as BG , CC , HSB etc. but IMO easier than LMB. Because of this and the relatively low cost/profit margin to train and grow them out to size hatcheries are not willing to spend the time and $ to train RES. On LMB the $ and profit/demand are much better so some hatcheries will go to the effort to feed train LMB and some will even grow them out to size.

I also recall Dave Willis 'comment that they have encountered both BG and YP stunting where the only predator is SMB. Man's action in managing is the key here. If you will continue to put in more FH and feed and harvest as called for you could add all the fish at once. Population balance may be more difficult however. I would be more comfortable in my chances of success with stocking FH first to establish then RES and later stocking advanced YP and SMB.

Well since everyone failed to ask your initial question, I shall.

The answer is yes, yes you would be crazy, but then again it's probably too late to save you anyway. So go with the flow, embrace insanity. And welcome to the asylum, you're in good company here.

I was happy to have most or all of the 20 feedtrained RES I placed in my new pond as broodstock in 2008 go back on pellets this year. Hardly any took pellets in 2008, but they musta have run way low on snails and remembered Aqaumax.

CW sez the longer they are on pellets the better they retain the training; these 20 RES were on pellets for about 20 months.

Anyone know where I could find a Dentist willing to write half an article on feed training RES? James? NEDOC? Anyone?

Our RES became feed trained on their own.
They are bottom feeders - never caught them on pellet flies until this discovery.
I believe they prefer sinking fish food pellets.

Is this the pot calling the kettle black or what?

Tom, main difference between me and the rest of you folks is that I freely admit I'm crazy, heck I not only recognize my lack of sanity, I embrace it.

The rest of you people are in denial.

JHAP's got a point.