Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Stocking fall trout. Should I add some brownies?

Hi all,

In the past I have stocked rainbow and golden trout during the fall in my 3 acre central Virginia pond for some put and take fishing through the cold weather months. It has been a blast.

I am considering adding a few brown trout this time for some fun diversity. For background, our pond has a pretty balanced LMB/BG/RES/CC mix. The rainbows and goldens have not seemed to upset that balance in the past. We usually stock some smaller trout (3” – 7”) to make up for any damage the larger ones (10’’+) may do to our forage base, and to keep for our larger bass (we land a few 5 – 7 pounders a year) occupied and away from the bigger trout that we like to catch.

My biggest concern about adding some 10”+ brown trout is that I hear they are more piscavorous than rainbows, and I don’t want to do any damage to my forage base. I also hear they are tougher to catch than rainbows, and I really don’t want to add fish that will harm my forage and then die in the early summer without me being able to catch them.

What does the forum think -- am I worrying about nothing and I should go ahead and add the brownies to the mix? Or should I just stick to only Rainbows and goldens since it has worked so well for us in the past? Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

Marc,

I sent you a PM

Chris

Browns from my experience may be a little harder to catch in a pond but not that much more difficult unless they are in spawning mode. If you are a good angler you shouldn't have any problems, especially if you let them get hungry. They are easier to catch on hardware than bows and brooks from my experience too.

If you feed them pellets they probably won't have much of an impact on the forage. I say that because I had 60 browns to 12 lbs. in a 1/10th acre pond and they had no interest whatsoever in nitecrawlers or minnows as bait. They only wanted the pellets.

Browns will live in slightly warmer water temperature too, so they'll last longer into the summer.

Thanks, Cecil. I am always impressed when I see pictures of your trout -- just amazing! I am not planning on supplemental pellet feeding. Would that change your thinking on potential impact to our forage base? We do have a forage pond so I could make an effort to increase the forage base to compensate, but I was hoping to avoid that extra effort if not needed.

Thanks, esshup. That's one of the reasons I am interested, along with some fun diversity. I just was worried that might come at the expense of some damage to my forage base, which I want to avoid.

In bodies of water where the goal is to grow larger fish, or to grow fish faster, I believe supplemental pellet feeding with good food is a very underutilized management tool. The pond owner doesn't have to feed to the extent that pellets are the primary source of food for the fish.

I may be hung by people that stock fish in ponds for a living (stocking fish in ponds is part of my business too) by saying this, but here goes.

I believe pellet feeding is much more cost effective than annually stocking forage fish such as FHM or Golden Shiners. Even with the cost of a good automated solar powered fish feeder, I believe it's still cheaper to feed good quality pellets to get the same amount of growth as annual or bi-annual forage fish stocking.

Now, I'm talking strictly stocking fish for forage, not dual purpose fish - Tilapia for instance. They eat Filamentous algae and also provide a lot of food for the predators in the pond.

Example:
10# of FHM at $10/lb. = $100. That's enough to add 1 pound of weight on a single predatory fish. 10# of high quality fish pellets at $1.125/lb. = $11.25. That could add up to 5# of weight on a single predatory fish.

Even if a person has a forage pond, the next time forage fish are transferred to the main pond, a weight should be taken just to see how much is actually being added to the main pond. They might be surprised at how many fish really need to be transferred to make a significant difference of the fish body condition in the main pond.

Feeding pellets to fish can be done by hand, but you have to be dedicated. To habituate fish to feed on pellets (even feed trained fish) they should be fed at the same time of day, in the same place in the pond EVERY day.

A person can't feed just on the weekends when they have time.

With automated feeders, the time and frequency of feeding can be adjusted and the more feed that is consumed by the predatory fish, the greater the reduction of predation on the forage base there is. Forage fish also benefit from feeding - fish with better body conditions will lay more eggs.

Every BOW and inhabits are different, but my CNBG are fed randomly - whenever I or we head down to the pond. We take a gallon bag half filled with two sizes of feed and within 15 seconds of the feed hitting the water the bluegills are on it.

Even at public bodies of water we usually take a bag of feed and toss it in. Fish are hungry everywhere