This is a little late, but I figure better late than never.
I met FRIZ at his place on Wed afternoon and he showed me his new ponds. He bought a nice piec of land a while ago, and last year had two ponds dug, each about an acre. They were completed late last Fall, and due to unforseen circumstances, he just got fish in them this past week.
Each pond is about 12'-14' deep, and he will be stocking each one with different predators. He has been doing a LOT of lurking on the forum, and he's absorbed a considerable amount of information (actually, he knows a lot more than he thinks he knows).
I don't have the exact numbers of fish written down, so my numbers may be off a bit. As of right now, each of the ponds are stocked with 5# FHM, 5# 3"-4" GSH, 50 Gambusia each and 50 4"-6" RES. He also stocked the drainage ditch on one side of the property with a handful of FHM and Gambusia for mosquito control. I thought I saw a couple of 1"-2" GSF in the ditch as his kids were stocking the minnows, but since we didn't get any in hand, I'm not 100% sure. I am 100% sure that they weren't BG. The ditch had less than a foot of water in it, and it was at the most 3' across. The ditch will not connect to the ponds unless there is a tremendous amount of water in one "rain" event, and even at that I highly doubt that. The ditch is at least 500' from any pond.
His current plan is to let these fish multiply in the ponds until next Spring, then he will stock some more RES and the predators. One pond will be stocked with Smallies and Yellow Perch, and I'm not sure what the plan is for the 2nd pond. He is having a 3rd pond dug this year, which will be roughly about the same size as the others. In that pond he will stock the same forage base, but add BG and LMB. He'd like to stock it with CSBG. TJ, you'd better get a move on making cages and traps!
His daughter was behind the camera, and these are what she sent me via e-mail. I know she took lots more, but she's at summer camp now so I don't know when I'll get more. He's an absentee PondMeister, and I'll be keeping an eye on the place for him when I can - it's only 15 minutes away at the most.
The kids had a blast, and the driver of the truck had a good time explaining to the kids what pond stocking was all about. In that last tank on the drivers side he had 1,000# of CC that looked like they were about 2# or bigger. He was going to a place in Gary after this stop. You should have seen the kids' eyes when they opened the lid and the CC got to splashing!
Here's the RES getting transferred to the bucket:
GSH getting tempered in pond #2.
Swim, little fishies, Swim!
Here go the RES
When he pulled in by the pond, he pulled off of the gravel road a bit. That was a mistake. We had a good rainstorm the previous day, and there were some soft spots. Luckily there was some equipment on site, and the contractor was only about 20 minutes away. He came right over after FRIZ called. The 8 ton truck was pulled out like it wasn't stuck at all, and off to the next pond we went.
That's about it, I'll let FRIZ fill in any blanks.
