Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Recent food chain consultation

Good morning everyone,

We recently bought some land with a 4 acre pond on it. It hasn't been fished in a least a couple of years until now and seems to be well/over-stocked with black crappie and LMB. We had a consultant come out this week and recommend stocking 5 lb/acre FH now, 10/lb acre tilapia in late April, and 300 CNBG/acre in early to mid summer to re-establish a food chain for the crappie and LMB. Do these rates sound reasonable? My real intent for the tilapia is algae and muck reduction, but I know they will serve a role in the food chain as well. Thanks for your feedback!

Welcome to the forum!

What forage fish are in the pond now? (species and size)

Typically up here, if FHM are stocked in a pond that has adult fish in it, it is with the knowledge that they will be eaten in short order, and will not establish a reproducing population in the pond for any extended length of time.

You didn't mention the size of the other fish that will be stocked. We usually try to stock fish that will survive predation (i.e. be larger than what the existing fish in the pond can eat) unless the pond owner wants smaller fish stocked, and he realizes that there is the possibility that a good number of them might not survive.

Typically a LMB can eat a fish 1/4 to 1/3 it's body length.

Oops. Welcome to the forum!

Does you consultant sell fish?

Great question. The info I get from my fish supplier and the info I get from the experts on this site is completely different on a regular bases.

Don.

Yes, the consultant is a local fishery that "consults" as a free service. I haven't seen forage fish of any type, but we've only had the place a couple of months and have fished it a handful of times.

The only size indication given was on the tilapia-I didn't think to ask on the CNBG because they were an add-on suggestion that I didn't originally inquire about.

Trust but verify! Thanks for your help.

JMac, when I said forage, I consider any fish that is in the pond for the predators to eat as "forage". That could be BG, CNBG, etc. Others might consider only bait fish to be "forage". i.e. FHM, Golden Shiners, etc. Sorry for the confusion.

4 acre pond x 5# FHM/acre = 20#.
10# of FHM = a LMB to grow 1#.
You will get 2 LMB to grow 1#.
Not to much achieved!!!

For every LMB you remove,
You give all that forage to the ones that are left.
Much better results!!!!

^^^^ What he said. A single LMB needs to eat approximately 10# of fish (of the correct size) to gain one pound of weight.

Now multiply that by the number of LMB in a pond and you quickly see why removing 20# to 30# of LMB per acre is the most cost effective way to grow larger LMB.

There is a relative weight chart in the archives. Compare your fish to it. If your fish are consistently below say 90%, then your pond is headed towards the typical "LMB stunted pond". Now, that may be just what you are looking for if you are managing the pond to grow large (10+" and 1+#) Bluegills, but not if you want large LMB.

I have had great success in improving the size of the LMB In my pond by removing as many as possible. It might sound counterintuitive at first but you can't argue with the results. See link below in signature file!

No confusion esshup-the only fish we've seen are LMB and crappie. The pond wasn't managed by the folks we bought the land from and they could only tell us it had been stocked, so I honestly don't know what's in it at this point other than what we've seen.

We are keeping every crappie and every LMB under 1.5 lbs we catch, so I'll refer to the chart in the archive to gauge what we're taking out. Thanks everyone!

JMac:

In new ponds, the stocking ratio for LMB to BG/CNBG is 1:10 to 1:30. If you have snails in your pond, I would add a minimum of 50 RES per acre to the pond. RES eat snails, and that breaks the life cycle of some fish parasites. (black spot, yellow and white grubs)

Please excuse my ignorance, but what are RES? The property is new to us, but I would estimate the pond's age between 30 and 40 years. I haven't seen any snails and the fish we've caught look to be healthy, just on the small side.

Redear Sunfish.

Try this for help.

Commonly Used Acronyms

All new Pond Boss members are required to take a test on these.

I repeatedly fail the test.

Fortunately there is no penalty for failure. All you have to do is refer to the list once in a while.

They are cool fish. If you are going to have BG, get some just for variety, even if you don't have a snail problem.

RES vs BG pics

More info on RES

I'm calling BS on the fish seller. I've never seen a situation where adding forage to an over stocked Texas pond helped. When you put them in, they promptly get eaten. And, it doesn't matter what kind of forage or how many you provide. BTW, this is a typical Texas pond that hasn't been managed.

The options are available but limited. Either fish the beejesus out of it and eliminate predators until their sizes increase. And, that's a lot of work and can take years. In the end, you still have to figure out how to add forage.

Or, you can rotenone the whole mess and restock. That's the easy, cheapest and most effective way but not a lot of people like to do it.

Crappie, due to their spawning rates, can destroy anything under 25 acres. They need to be eliminated.

Step one is to do a water sample and send it to TAMU. Step 2 is to do nothing right now until you learn more about your new pond.

jmac,
Who is the fish seller? Our ponds are in East Texas as well and I will tell you there are some unreputable fish sellers in our area.

The numbers do not sound right for our area. I am hearing an alert in my head over this one.

No those suggestions don't sound viable. A common stocking suggestion for LMB crowded ponds is 500 adult BG per acre plus removal of 25 -35 lbs of LMB per acre. I couple that with adult RES and some other type forage (adult tilapia , tshad , Gshiners) in numbers large enough to sustain a population. With BC in the mix those numbers need to be larger , my guess is by 25%.

In addition to what ewest said - remember the added BG, RES, or tiapia should be 1/3 the length of the most common size of bass (14"/3 = 4"-5") to get good survival of the sunfishes. Larger sized RES & BG may be a little difficult to locate but keep looking until you find them. As mentioned it is very important to keep removing lots of bass and all crappie until you notice the remaining bass are getting fatter or more plump and average size is increasing. Do not worry about removing too many bass because they will very quickly repopulate good numbers of young bass which will allow the add stock panfish to become established.

Sometimes one cannot remove enough bass by angling and it is necessary to hire - implement an electroshocking program to assist in bass removal.