Just finished building my 1.2 surface acre pond about three weeks ago. Heavy rains last week has pond over half full.
Pond is 24 ft deep at the damn. Has lots of structure left in during construction. Large stumps rolled back in as well as large 4 ft creek channel. Pond has nice spring feeding it that runs all year long. Approx 7 gallons a minute in August and as many as 30 in Winter.
I have two opportunities to buy from a fish truck next weekend within 30 miles.
1st is fish truck from Arkansas on next Friday.
2nd is fish truck from seponds on next Saturday
My goal:
Take a kid fishing and catch some real good action:
I'd like to manage by stocking mostly hybrids. Have no problem restocking what we catch and keep, but will rarely keep the fish.
Want
Hybrid Stiped Bass.
Hybrid Largemouth F! (maybe)
Hybrid Bluegill
Hybrid Crappie.
Fall stocking of some Rainbow trout for early spring catching for my dad. These will be table fare for him.
No Catfish
Can anyone help me with stocking numbers?
Should I throw regular bluegill and shellcracker in there for bait?
Minnows?
Should I buy all this fall or wait till next Spring for the predator fish?
I do plan to pellet feed all year long.
I will aerate the pond before summer next year.
Sorry for all the questions, but this pond has been my dream since I was a kid and I want to get this right.
Thanks
First, a very big welcome to Pond Boss. You will get a lot of good suggestions. If you get bad suggestions, they will usually be challenged. So, be ready to average what you get, including what I'm about to post.
(Just as I posted this, I saw Bill Cody's post above. Bill is a very close personal friend who I greatly respect and have immensely learned from. He is far more experienced, and more educated in aquaculture than me. Again, take my "be ready to average what you get" before making a decision.)
My primary home is about 200 miles north of you, near Winchester, VA, abutting the WV/VA state line. I also have a home about 200 miles southeast of you, near Southport, NC. Weldon (Ralph's BBQ) is about halfway between.
I buy from both suppliers you mentioned. My first choice would be SE Pond Stockers, for several reasons. Although, IMO the Arkansas guys are pretty reputable too. My reason for going with SE Pondstockers is that they are almost local to you, and they mostly only do overnight trips. Their fish are in great shape when you get them, not that the Arkansas guys don't have some pretty good trucks. Nearly all of them get their stock from the same sources.
SE usually can provide hybrid striped bass if you call ahead. I don't believe that the Arkansas trucks are supplying striped bass.
I would not stock the hybrid crappie. To the best of my recent study about them, they are not true hybrids. They are not like the triploids that cannot reproduce. In my opinion (along with a little bit of science) they are almost as unpredictable as straight-run white or black crappie. You just don't know what effects they may have on your pond.
My notes below are based on feeding the pond with commercial fish food on a regular basis. My suggestions won't work if the pond is not fed with with supplemental feed.
Based on my comments above, I wouldn't stock minnows if you are planning on stocking the pond in the next couple of weeks. The minnows will be eaten by the other fish before they have a chance to eat and grow. Supplemental feed would bwe
With your goals, if your new 1.2 acre pond was mine to stock tomorrow, I would start with 25-50 hybrid striped bass, anywhere from 150-500 hybrid bluegill (probably tending toward the high end), and just a small number of large mouth bass -- maybe five,
or none at all. If possible, I'd hold off on the largemouth bass.
I don't like to suggest "bucket stocking" but if you want to keep this as a put-and-take pond, you will have to very carefully select what goes into the pond. You wouldn't need very many largemouth to keep any recruitment from the hybrid bluegill under control. If you do choose largemouth bass, they should be stocked as a single sex so that they can't reproduce. The only reasonable method I know of for non-scientific sex determination of LMB is to squeeze them during spawning season. By squeezing them before spawning you will either see yellow eggs from a female, or white milt from a male.
The hybrid striped bass should be able to keep the hybrid bluegill under control.
I'm not sure why you ruled out channel catfish. As with all additions to a pond, everything has its issues. If it were my pond I'd give serious consideration to adding 10 to 25 4-6 inch channel cats instead of any largemouth bass. They too will help keep reproduction of the hybrid bluegill under control.
Especially for kids, the channel cats add excitement, they grow fast, and they are delicious. At a couple of pounds, they make good predators, along with hybrid striped bass, for unwanted recruitment (reproduction) of your hybrid bluegill. Just don't ever release a channel cat back into the pond, as they have very long memories about being hooked.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. One of my ponds is dedicated to kids and the elderly. It is by far the most fun ponds where anyone can sit in a chair, throw out a bait, and catch a fish within about 30 seconds. It might be a fat hybrid bluegill, a hybrid striped bass, or a channel catfish.
As for winter trout, I love them. Unfortunately, my experience with them in HBG/HSB ponds is that the HBG/HSB will grab a bait much quicker than a trout will grab it. My last two seasons with trout in our put-and-take HSB/HBG/CC pond has been quite disappointing because we could not fish the trout out of the pond.
If this is your first season stocking this pond, the trout will be much larger than the other fish, except possibly the HSB. The trout will look at the stock as delicious sushi.
We've had great success and fun with trout in our standard bluegill and largemouth bass pond. I really like to stock golden trout because they are so visible. They are just a variation of rainbow trout, but more colorful.
Lastly, the trout are a lot of fun whether you can catch them, or not. If you throw out floating fish food pellets, they will do all kinds of acrobatics attempting to grab even a very small pellet.
This is not scientific, but figure you will probably lose about 20-30 percent of all adult size fish every season due to natural causes.
Good luck. Don't be afraid to ask lots of questions in the next couple of days before you do any stocking.
As I think you mentioned, you will have to replenish such a pond on a regular basis -- probably spring and fall. Such a pond is an incredible experience for young, old, and in between.
Tonight's dinner, for friends and family, was a nice HSB and a reasonable sized CC from our put-and-take pond.
Ken