Pond Boss

That the same problem I have, I am 100 mlies away from my pond so I am like a divorced dad, I only get to see my baby a couple times a month and a week in july. I am still so new I want to figure out my first before building the 1/2 acre one I found a spot for

A day late and a dollar short here , but.
The main thing I see wrong is ponds with the same type of fish for different purposes and plenty of room but no real though about future. I would choose 2 ponds for your sport fish. You will need to fish you ponds, and being as though they are private all the fish should be easy to catch. Now next to these 2 ponds I would have another small pond for each to raise additional forage. Then you can remove small fish as needed and add large forage fish periodically and then keep some of the larger forage fish to restock your forage pond. I would also stock crayfish and small frogs as forage also. You can never have enough natural food. Also here, all of our biggest bass eat alot of trout.

Presently have four ponds:

One .62 acre pond where I grow out feed trained largemouth bass and yellow perch that I sell whole frozen once they become large enough to other taxidermists, taxidermy schools, and fish replica makers. Have had bluegill in this pond but they haven't been doing that well the last comple of years probably due to competiton from the yellow perch and that lack of an algae bloom due to nutrients tied up in macrophytes. The perch do very well even though they go off the feed for the most part due to the aggressiveness of the largemouth bass at feeding time. I'm convinced the perch feed on the largemouth bass offspring, as there is not much recruitment of largemouth bass in this pond, even though there have been as many as 300 bass up to 4 lbs. in this pond and lots of spawning activity. Of course the bass may eat their offspring too although the are very conditioned to the pellets. This pond will be drained sometime this year with any standing water rotenoned as the chara has gotten so out of control I can't get an algae bloom anymore. I have learned enough now to keep the algae bloom going and chara in check once I start over.

Also three 1/10th acre ponds approximately 90 by 40 feet give or take. One is exclusively for trout which I run well water into, one right now has some broodstock bass in it for my own bass production this spring, and the other one is drained presently which I will fertilize and fill this spring and introduce some brookstock yellow perch for my own yellow perch production and feedtraining. Used to buy all my feed trained fish, but due to the VHS emergency order by APHIS and subsequent expensive testing required by APHIS it will become difficult to find a producer anymore. Hope to produce my own trout from eggs as soon as this fall or the following.

Would love to have one more 1/3 acre pond exclusively for female yellow perch (grow the fastest and the largest) another 1/3 acre pond for production of male only bluegill which again grow the largest. And a two or three more 1/10 acre ponds for production of fingerlings. If money was no object it would be nice to have three ponds for trout with brooks in one, browns in another, and rainbows in the third. However well pumping would have to be increased substantially which would require a much larger pump and higher utility costs. It's a possibilityh though as the fish I do produce sell rapidly and for high prices up to about $100.00 a piece.

Will be putting in a small building as soon as this fall for trout hatching and some tanks for production fingerlings and larger before planting into ponds. May utilize a floating raceway or cages to separate the smaller trout from larger ones. I haven't had good luck putting trout together that vary in size much. The smaller fish become stressed and don't get as much to eat as the larger fish do.