Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Hi diversity vrs. low diversity species in ponds

Whenever we talk about species, stalking rates etc., one question always comes up. Do you want one or a few species in your lake or do you want lots of different species?

In the over whelming nunber of cases, most people want simple systems. You manage your pond one way and you get big bass. You manage your pond another way and you get big panfish. Most any fisheries manager can tell you how to do this.

We have a very high diversity pond (4 acres of water plus 1 1/2 acres of island. The debth ranges from 15 ft. to 3 ft. flats. It has two aerators.

Fish species include: LMB, SMB, wipers, white bass, rock bass, bluegills, hybrid bluegills, pumkinseed sunfish, green sunfish, black crappie, white crappie, walleye, sauger, yellow perch`, channel catfish, goldeye, freshwater drum, shorthead redhorse, white suckers and small numbers of many other species.

Has anyone else tried anything like this?

I'm still planning the stocking of my lake, but from everything I've read a high diversity requires a high management commitment. I would anticipate this to especially be the case when many experts don't recommend some of the stocked species in a lake that size.

It sounds like you have a really nice lake. Please let us know how it goes.

Yes, it does require more management but I don't think it is more than many readers of this magazine devote to their ponds. Actually, the only work is stocking two year old fish of selective species. My guess is that we have better fishing than people that put much more time and effort into their ponds

I love it when people think "outside the box." This concept is certainly outside the box.
Our company has several lakes with multi-species management. Most of these lakes are fairly large...bigger than 40 acres, up to 600.
Here's what I have seen. The more predator fish, the more dynamic the entire fishery seems to be. Different predators begin to dominate different niches in the lake. Forage fish numbers rise and fall, and as goes the "best" forage, so goes the most dominant predator of that forage fish.
For example, take Lake Kiowa, about 20 miles from my house. As threadfin shad and small gizzard shad thrive, so do white bass. As bluegill, shad, and redear sunfish thrive, so do largemouth bass.
As golden shiners come and go, with silversides minnows, black crappie come and go.
A remnant population of yellow perch in this north Texas lake exists...but without their main food, and hot water in summer, yellow perch numbers are too low for a thriving, catchable fishery.
Channel catfish numbers rise, and fall.
One absolute I have seen with multiple species of predator fish....there will be one or two dominant species, some in the middle, and some headed for extinction.
Tweaking, adjusting, managing for specific forage fish can cause a certain predator species, or certain year class of a species to quickly rebound.
Here's another absolute...your pond has a maximum production capability. Take that maximum and divide it amongst your forage fish and the different predators, and that's what you get...divided results of different fish.
A largemouth bass/bluegill fishery grows the maximum number of pounds of those two species.
But, add smallmouth, or walleye, with wipers and two or three others, that "given" amount of forage fish will still only support a "given'" poundage of predator fish. Therefore, competition amongst and between predators, their ability to survive, their mouth size, and their ability to reproduce directly influences long term survival, and heath, of that fishery.

I think Bob Lusk made an important point when he mentioned the size of the pond in connection to diversity. If a pond has a uniform habitat one predator and one forage species will be able to dominate. To have diversity in your fish you need diversity in your lake. If someone wanted Bass and walleye they are going to need to build a pond that offers seperate walleye habitat. Most ponds are built to offer 100% bass habitat. But by adding some deeper holes, sand and rock piles and yellow perch the walleyes can maintain there home court advantage, so to speak.

Bob's other point about maximum carrying capacity is also true. A survey in northern MN found that lake trout did better in lakes with out small mouth bass. SMB generaly use habitat under 20' deep, while Lake trout in northern MN spend the summer near the 100' mark. Yet these species still manage to compete enough that the lakers growth is slowed.

I'm for diversity in my pond. This is the first time I've done any type of stocking besides emptying my bait (shiners or fatheads).

Existing fish were LMB, Cats, Crappies, Sunnies, and Perch.

Additions this year were more LMB, SMB, a few Wipers, more Perch, and a lot more fatheads and shiners.

We've got depths in flats as low as 3' and going to 5 & 6'. We've got a long creek channel that's 6-10' deep, and about a 1 acre area thats 10-20'. The whole water area is roughly 7 acres, partiallly spring fed, and partially creek fed.

But my situation is different because any thing can come into my lake from the creek; anything can leave my lake via the creek also. The creek flows along side the long side of my lake, separated by an abandoned RR berm. The creek connects to my lake via a 5' pipe buried in the RR berm; there is a damn just downstream of that pipe which pools up water and flows it into my lake. Then theres a similar 3' pipe about 300 feet down stream that can serve as the outlet.

I believe I would get bored if all I could catch was LMB and Sunfish, even if every LMB was 5 lbs plus. Then again, for all I know at this point, all of my new SMB could be out in the creek.

I disagree with the idea that the idea of “carrying capacity” is a constant. It is a measurement (usually by weight called “bio-mass”) of different living things to use their environment. As such, it is variable. Here are some examples.

Imagine two identical ponds in the South. Let’s stock LMB in one pond and gizzard shad in the other. Let’s wait five years and come back and seine both ponds. If carrying capacity were a constant, we would expect the same weight of fish in both ponds. Obviously, we would find a much more weight of gizzard shad than LMB because gizzard shad can use their environment much more intensively than LMB can.

Here is another example. You stock a pond with LMB and a carrying capacity is reached. Then you add another species, bluegills. The bluegills can use resources in the ponds that the LMB could not and a new carrying capacity is reached. However, the bluegills are also competing for resources with the LMB. Let’s add a third species, channel catfish. Again, the catfish is able to use resources in the pond that the LMB and bluegill could. The carrying capacity of this pond increases again. However, the catfish are also competing for resources with the LMB and bluegills. Let’s add a fourth species, redear sunfish. Again, they are able to use resources in the ponds (snails for instance) and so the carrying capacity of the pond increases again. Again, they also compete with the other three species for resources. The point of this is that we have developed four different carrying capacities for exactly the same pond.

So why don’t we just keep adding species to all of our ponds? Because most of us really don’t care about carrying capacity. What we do care about is maximizing production of something like big LMB or large panfish. Remember, as we increase diversity, we increase competition for resources. That means individual fish don’t grow as fast or as big as they would with less competition.

In my case, I don’t care about trophy bass or lots of panfish to eat. What we do get is lots of good size fish of many different species that are always hungry.

I love catching a "mixed" bag of fish. Lunker Bass are awesome, Hybrid Stripers fight to the extreme, Huge Catfish break your line, Crappie taste great. I'm thankful my pond is in the South where Tipapia multiply like crazy, Threadfin Shad flourish, and the might Bluegill backs them up as forage during the winter...sure makes for some interesting conversation and tough decisions !

Norm,
I don't think anyone is suggesting that carrying capacity of a pond is a constant.
What has been reffered to is maximum carrying capacity. The idea is that any given body of water can support only so many fish (maximum carrying cap.) reguardless of species.
Now I'm sure that with certain combinations of fish in a pond that max. cap. may vary somewhat however that is the general rule.

I ditto what RIc said. I think most folks understand carrying capacity is not an exact number, and realize it changes as population dynamics change. However, you hit on the more important point of competetion. It is all about your goals. If you want to maximize bass growth for trophy bass you should not stock, channel catfish, hybrid stripers, small mouth bass, etc. However if you don't mind giving up some bass growth to enjoy hybird bass action then stock them, just realize you are definently lowering the potential bass growth by lowering forage base.

Greg is it possible to add other species without lowering the forage base?

For instance, here's how I'm looking at it. If you have a family of 3, Father Wife and child, and everyday they were fed a constant amount of food...say 3 pounds. (I have no clue if that is even close to being accurate) Then each person could consume approx. 1 pound. However, if two more children were added with the same amount of food being brought in then each person would only have .6 pounds.

Now looking at our ponds and backing up what you said previously, if we have a certain number of forage fish and predator fish then each fish can have so much. If we add a different species that also consumes the forage fish, then each predator fish gets less as in our family mentioned above. But what if we could have such a large forage base that the introduction of wipers or channels would not influence growth? Is this possible in a pond environment? I know I have seen HUGE schools of shiners/baitfish in lakes before. So my real question is...Is it possible to obtain a forage base that is large enough to sustain a number of species of predators and that doesn't have to be restocked?

Oh yea and I forgot to mention this too...it might help clear up my question too.

With the family analogy...what I was saying was that the family could simply buy more food...thus making the 3 pounds, 5 pounds...then each person would again have 1 pound of food per day and would no longer be competing. Is this possible in nature?

Chris

Tritonvt; The family analogy might work as long as there were no issues other than food intake. But, the more family members we add, the more waste there is to be dealt with. Now, that might not be a huge issue with indoor plumbing but fish have no convenient way to dispose of waste. They live with/in it. Thus the concept of biomass, oxygen availability, increased disease, etc. in a water hole.

Also, there ain't no free rides. Adding 2 more family members means the first 3 usually have to do without something, maybe space in the house or quality of food or some sacrifice to accomodate the 66% addition to the population. Of course, all of this assumes a stable income with no salary increase or no move to larger quarters.

Tritonvt,
Take a balanced LMB/BG pond .. Like Greg said it depends on your goals. If you're managing for quality bass ie:(not catching a bass on every cast but the ones caught are BIG) the ideal numbers or balance of both fish in the pond will be different than if you're managing for quantity of bass ie: (catching & eating alot of bass.) Now in the Quality bass pond you've reached a ballance of preditor/forage such that you are growing very large bass very quickly. Then you sell the pond & the new owner loves catching your huge bass but also wants to grow & catch huge blue cats so he introduces them to this very well balanced pond and increases the forage by adding shad & shiners.
On the surface it looks as if this could work, and I'm sure it's possible. BUT .. managing such a pond without damaging the quality of the huge bass will be extreemly difficult. When the new owner introduced an additional preditor he should be prepared to diminish his trophy bass fishery. Like Greg said it all depends on your goals.

As many of you probably know you all are discussing a very complex topic and one that still needs more research. Lots of variables affect carrying capacity and standing crop.

Standing crop defined as poundage of one or all species present in a water body at a specific moment. Standing crop can be quite variable in the same water body.

For example, Standing crop of all fish in Ridge Lk in IL was measured 9 times in 27 yrs. LMB and bgill dominated the fish community. After each census all bass of useful size for angling were returned and bgill numbers were reduced to usu. 200 per acre of the larger individuals. A small feeder stream allowed a few bullheads, g.sunfish, and minnows to enter the lake. Total weight of fish per acre at each census showed:
Yr... Tot.Wt/ac
1943 = 48.7
1945 = 72.3
1947 = 256.3
1949 = 140.2
1951 = 163.8
1953a= 116.9
1956a= 199.6
1959 = 247.4
1963 = 240.9
a = Drawdowns were used to estimate impact on fishery. Source Mgmt of Lakes&Ponds, by Bennett

Highly variable results from this long term study which indicates to me that none of this stuff is real dependable or our "rules" or guidelines are probably not "definate" and much still needs to be researched and learned about management of the aquatic system.

Bill, Do you know how they measured the standing crop? How accurate are the numbers?

Standing crops were measured by draining the water and seining of all remaining fish. In other wards a total census was taken each time, fish were sorted and desirables were returned to the lake after each census.

Again, I respectfully disagree with the idea presented as carrying capacity. At times, my disagreement with this idea was not respectful and for that I apologize. This discussion is not trivial nor is it just a word game. Rather, it goes to our basic understanding of biology and our management of our lakes. In some cases, I will take my examples to an extreme to help illustrate them better.

I grew up on a farm in Nebraska in the 50’s and 60’s. There, I learned about carrying capacity in terms of the number of cattle that we could put on our pasture. Most farmers and ranchers can quickly tell you the carrying capacity of their pastures. This could be called the natural carrying capacity. However, since they must produce more income from this land, they often fertilize, irrigate or manage this land in many different ways so that they can raise more cattle. Sometimes, they take this another step and bring in supplemental feed so they can raise more cattle on this land. We now have an even higher carrying capacity. Taking this idea even further, we bring in all of the feed and have a cattle feedlot. Going even further, we squeeze these cattle into a semi-trailer to take them to market. The extreme of this idea is sardines in a can. This is the maximum carrying capacity of anything, it is its volume.

So far, we have kept the species (cattle) constant. Let’s change the cattle a little bit. Over time, we bought cattle that converted feed to body mass better. Also at this time, I was in college studying ecology and evolutionary biology. This got me thinking. Our pasture and the way we managed it hadn’t changed but the carrying capacity had. If carrying capacity was a constant, this wasn’t possible. I was finally able to figure out that carrying capacity really wasn’t about our pasture but was about our cattle’s ability to use our pasture.

This is the point. Carrying capacity isn’t a measurement of the resource. It is a measurement of different species’ or group of species’ ability to use that resource. To use an extreme example again, cattle could use our pasture very well. Fish could not use it at all. This had nothing to do with the quality of our pasture but rather it has everything to do with the vastly different abilities of these two species to use this particular resource.

This understanding has tremendous implications for managing our ponds. There is a very great difference in different fish species’ ability to use the resources in our lakes.

LMB have a very poor ability to use the resources in our lakes. They are good at using larger animals as food but very poor at using very small animals and plants as food. They are also very poor at converting food to flesh. Let’s illustrate this better by comparing carrying capacity, usually measured in pounds per acre, to a pie. And let’s use your lake without doing anything to it. If you put just LMB into your lake, you will have a very small pie. Gizzard shad are very good at using the resources in your lake (if you are far enough south for them to live). Your lake hasn’t changed but now you have a very large pie. This is also true for any combination of species. Different groups of species will use the resources in your lake better or worse than other groups of species. That means that the particular group of fish species determines the size of the pie. In general (with many exceptions), the more species, the bigger the pie meaning the more total pounds of fish per acre.

Now, let’s say that my understanding of this concept is incorrect (heaven forbid). I have been known to be wrong on more than a few occasions. Your lake supports about 300 pounds of fish per acre. Without fertilizing or feeding, that is your lake’s carrying capacity, maximum carrying capacity or whatever words you want to use. You can divide this 300 pounds between a few species or many species but you still won’t raise more than 300 pounds of fish per acre. Let’s say that your goal is to raise very big LMB. If the normal understanding of carrying capacity is correct, then it is a complete waste of time to add a forage species to your lake. The weight of this forage is taking away from the 300 pounds per acre that would be in the LMB otherwise.

None of this negates any of the research that has been done with fisheries management. Nor am I advocating putting every species we can think of in our lakes.

Seldom does anyone manage their lake to produce the largest pie they can. Rather, they manage to produce a certain crop or experience. Our 4-acre lake is designed for use by kids, handicapped and elderly people in groups. Therefore, I manage it to produce the largest number of good-sized fish with the greatest diversity possible. That means no flathead catfish or northern pike because they would eat everything in my lake and I would end up with a smaller diversity. The point is that I am not just putting different species in this lake to have more species. Rather, I evaluate all of these species to see how they might work together to meet my management goals.

Hopefully, this illustrates my understanding of the concept of carrying capacity better.

Norm,
I am convinced you have a very good grasp on carrying cap. of a pond/lake as I understand carrying capacity. I think the problem has been in some of us (including me) in trying to convey our thoughts. I'm not a LMB/BG guy. I don't put it down it's just not what I want. I like diversity. It would become boaring if every pond we fished only produced LMB/BG.
However I do understand how it could become difficult for the guy that wants HUGE LMB to manage to that end if he had to contend with other preditors.

tritonvt,
Dave and Ric answered your questions, but here goes. You wanted to know is it possible to have enough forage so you can stock preadtors without restocking forage. The short answer NO. As Cody mentiuoned very complex. I'll explain it this way. My example before was with an addtional predator when you want to grow bass.

This time we will use another recommendation I make alot. Stock threadfin shad in bluegill/lmb pond as an additional forage to grow more bass. SOme folks may think cool I'll stock the shad and that will mean if I grow 200 lbs/acre of shad I can grow 20 lbs more bass in the pond. Wrong the 200 lbs of shad will feed on zooplanktoin that would have otherwise went into aquatic insect production that was consumed by bluegill. therefore the shad take away "some" food from the bluegill. How much?, not sure. However the addition of 200 lbs of shad woild outweight the fact the bluegill production was reducded by say 50 lbs. Get it???

As Norm said you can produce more shad than other species. Why b/c they are closer in trophic status to the amount of nutrients than the predators who have several layers in the food web b/f they get fed. So add this to your answer, you can only produce so many pounds of forage b/c you can only fertilize so much b/f you have a fish kill. As Dave said this is an environment where you have waste and disease outbreaks. I hardly ever work a fish kill where a low fish populaiton was invlolved unless from some toxicant. Most of the time it is because some fish dealer said they could grow 2,000 lbs in their 1/4 acre pond with fertilizer and a feeder. I can go on and on and I probably am not explaining this well anyway.

Norm "there is" a point where there is a carrying capacity. It can be raised by supplemental feeding, fertilizing, adding a diffused air system, then a surface aerator, more forage that occupies a differnt niche. However at some point you have reached the top and before you get there you have made things more difficult with numerous species.

Norm I get your point and applaud it. I love to work with folks who like other goals thus stock several species like yourself. I also like helping folks grow big bass or big bluegill. However, I don't want any new readers to think from your post there is not a carrying capacity, there is. I think you understand so maybe it is just the term you don't like. Reread Bob's post. Maybe it is b/c I'm a biologist but I like the term carrying capacity it makes people understand they can only have so much of something no matter what they do. whether it be whitetail deer or fish. Go for it raise the bar that is what I hope I'm doing for my clients, but realize there is an end point and many times pushing it too far will led to trouble.

For me, managing a high diversity lake is extremely simple and easy.

Most of the people fishing our lake are kids, handicapped or elderly in groups under the supervision of parents or professional staff. Most of them have very little, if any, fishing experience. If they have fishing equipment, it is usually heavy enough to catch a whale. Therefore, I furnish all rods, reels, tackle and bait. We use inexpensive spin casting reels with a single circle hook, split shot and bobber. Most of the fishing is from a covered bridge especially made for use by people in wheelchairs. My management goal then is to provide a quality fishing experience for these people.

This is what I think they want for their experience. First, they want to catch a lot of fish. Second, they want these fish to be good size so they can tell their friends and family about them. We try to make sure that everyone has a picture of themselves with a big fish. Lastly, they love counting how many different species they caught.

We have very high fishing pressure on this small lake. If we allowed fish to be taken from this lake, we could fish it out very quickly. So, the first thing we did was to make this lake totally catch and release. We catch many of these fish 25-100 times a season. The most important thing we did to reduce catch and release mortality was the use of circle hooks. They are amazing, especially with pan fish.

Next, I manage this just like everyone else does to produce large panfish. The only thing different is that I have so many forage fish to control. I do that with lots of different species of predators and over stocking predators. Most of our panfish are large so they help control the fry and fingerlings.

Lastly, I don’t expect any of the predators to reproduce in my lake. It is great if they do, but I don’t count on it. I treat them all as if they were wipers that I have to constantly replace. It’s no harder or expensive to constantly stock LMB or catfish than it is with wipers. SMB are more expensive so you have to decide how much they mean to you. They mean a lot to me.

There are a huge number of advantages to constantly stocking the predators. I don’t have to worry about the crappie fry eating the LMB fry. I don’t have to worry if I get a good year class of something. If I decide that I want more of something, I just buy it. If I get too many forage fish, I just buy more predators. Most of these predators are the size appropriate to managing for large panfish. However, I’ve purchased a couple of “WOW” fish of each species.

Does it seem like it would be a lot of money to purchase these fish? I don’t smoke, drink, gamble or run around. This is my hobby. Compared to the amount of money most of us have spent on our lakes, this amount of money for fish each year is insignificant.

Bits and parts of this type of management can be used in many situations. Hopefully, this might provide more ideas about ways to manage our lakes.

Boy!
This is all new to me! I have always wanted diveristy, but it seem always a big no no by the experts, so I realy did not mentioned it.
I thought I had a grasp on this carying capacity (or what ever you call it), Until I read Norm post. Some of the stuff he say makes a lot of sense to me. I always thought that different fish occupy different parts of the lake. But other parts he talks about, when mentioning "Big Pie" I am totaly confused...

My thoughts right or wrong were always that your pond can only produce a certain pound of forage and therefor inturn can produce a certain number of Predetor fish. If you can produce 200 lbs of forage, then that means they can be all blugill or you can split it up into many different speices, but at the end of the day you only get 200 lbs. This is unless you add some sort of catylest to the system, like a feeder, then you increase your "carting capacity".
This the same with the Predetors you xxx number of lbs per acer, I can be one predetor or lots of different predetors. If want to increase this number then you have to elevate your forage base.

Me personally I want to have a diversity and still grow large bass. My Idea is to stock less than the recomended rates of LMB and add three other predetors..

Whew!
Lots of information. Can be confusing.
Simply stated....carrying capacity is what life a given environment can support at a given time.
Here's an absolute...carrying capacity changes. It has to. Growing season changes, species variety changes (as some creatures eat plants, other creatures eat those creatures), fertility changes, photoperiod changes. Therefore, carrying capacity must change, or it will die. Here's another absolute...carrying capacity cannot be accurately measured. Nutrients feed plankton, which feeds insects and small fish, which feeds larger fish, which feed larger fish, which feed larger fish, and so on.
Each level results in energy conversion, and energy loss, as well as waste, some of which is converted back to plankton...recycled, if you will. This system is dynamic, changing, rolling, molding, onward, downward, upward...all the time. These systems are affected by nutrient load, sunshine, temperature, birth, death, attrition.
So, to keep it simple, fisheries guys like me look at carrying capacity in categories such as bass. Carrying capacity of largemouth bass is different in lakes with no forage, and clear water, than in lakes with a strong plankton bloom and diverse forage fish populations.
Carrying capacity is relative, and relevant for those people trying to monitor and manage growth of particular species of fish. To increase the standing crop of game fish, increase the carrying capacity of the environment that grows their food. And, be sure to use species of fish that fit each practical niche in that environment, to enhance your target species.
In other words, for example, in the south, we use bluegill, threadfin shad and redear sunfish as forage for largemouth bass. Each species fills a different niche in a pond.
But, go north too far, and you can forget threadfins and redear. But, you can have yellow perch with bluegill, if you are feeding the appropriate predator fish with these prolific spawners.
Carrying capacity is a circus...many rings juggling many things.

This is my vote for B. Lusk to write an article about Norm's lake and the diversity of fish in Norm's lake and how it works for him. Included should be how Norm manages fish and several or numerous pictures of Norm's happy customers with different or each type of fish. Pictures would be fun to see if nothing else.

Others may want to try and duplicate Norm's version of fish diversity. Of course this is all dependant on Bob and Norm agreeing.

I smoke, drink, gamble and run around. I'm thirty two and look ninety. The reason I'm constructing a pond is so I'll have something to do whem I'm no longer able/interested in smoking, drinking, gambling and running around.