Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Will bluegill still grow and feed after you move from one pond to the other?

Hi, well my pond is very small like 1/4 acre but it's deep. It goes from 4 to 5 then drops down to 12 feet. I got cover I made for the smaller fish before the pond started holding water. Now that eveything has matured somewhat, I noticed that not all the bluegill will come up to feed only catfish. Now I stock my fish by myself. I go after big bluegill and catfish in ponds and then load them in so I get a jumpstart on growth. Will these fish still grow? Or is it they gotta get used to their surroundings before they join the others at their 4pm meal time. They are in their too cause i see the big 1 pound bluegill and they want feed just the little babbie. Also, since I got catfish and 5 thats like 7 pounds would it be safe for me to stock some 100coppernose/100shellcracker/100catfish

Thanks

I have swapped some fish with another pond and didn't seem to have any problems, he needed bass & I needed bg. This is not always a smart thing to do as you can introduce diseases from another pond into yours.

Did you get them from a pond where they were pellet fed or just relied on natures forage? It can take a few weeks or more to train even bg to feed on pellets sometimes. They should still grow. What are your goals for this pond? just bream and cats? or do you plan on adding any bass or other predator?

I have had some forage ponds on my place that we seined to stock forage for a neighbors pond. No apparent problems but it can happen.

My goal is to have just a good bluegill fish hole. I would add bass but I don't think it would be a good idea cause the size. I do plan on adding some small 1 lb bass once I get everything done to control the population. Also I may add some catfish as well. I caught these fish out of a freinds pond. It's an old pond about 20 years old stocked with regular gill, channel, bass, and 2 years ago they stocked it with more bass and hybrids. I caught a few hybrids surprisingly, the bigger bluegill though were the regular. It may be a small pond but with feeding and taking care of it I know I can grow big fish. I've seen it down here in ponds as small as 50x50 feet.

Rattler, I've produced large fish in a 1/4 acre pond myself, although I continue enlarging the pond to accomodate the fish I want. Right now I'm at .33 acre and digging again this fall to try and reach 1.5 acre.

I would say a stocking rate of 100-150 bg and 25 cats would start out about right, split the bg % for coppers and shells however you want. You will eventually need a predator to keep from stunting the growth of the bg and keeping the population in check. Bass or cats should do for that.

Good luck and have fun!

Rattler,
We had a 1/4 acre pond on our last place and we grew some big cats and bgs. We also had a few bass at 2 to 3 pounds. We bought the cats and bgs and brought in the bass from another pond. We never had a problem.

We started the cats on pellets but eventually stopped when they got over 5 pounds. They continued to grow just fine on natural food. All the kids in the neighborhood had a ball catching the bg and an occasional cat.

Brad B.

lildumper, your doing the same thing i'm doing. I'm making mine bigger little by little as well. Although I'm using a shovel cause trackhoe prices are high down here, and it cost almost as much to deliver it as it does to rent it. It's going good though. I failed the first time cause i didn't make the dam big nuff but now i'm going all out with a huge dam. Yeah Them catfish are getting huge thats why I gotta stock something quick. I have about 30 of about 2 pounds but some 8-10 pounder that have grown quickly.

Thanks for the input everyone...