Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Warmouth

Would it be possible to have a warmouth only pond? Stock FHM, Gambusia, Northern Redbelly Dace, Sailfin Mollies, and crawfish. Then have Warmouth as the prime predator. This would be an ideal small pond setup. About 1/4 an acre. Warmouth are predators that reach 12" and have a larger mouth than most sunnies. They also reproduce very little. So would this be a feasable deal? Getting the fish would be the hardest thing.

Most options are open in a 1/4 acre pond as it is easier to manage by fishing , trapping and seining as things need attention. Easy to re-do if you have bad results.

I'm sure you guys have figured out i am more of a bystander than a pond manager, but i will say this.....I love catching warmouth. You put the line in for a BG or some other panfish then all of a sudden your rod is bent over and the drag is tearing out.

Or, you put a rat-l-trap down for bass and the same thing happens, you think you have a good 2-3lb on and pull it up to see the toughest SOB sunfish you've ever seen.

Kudos to whomever puts this together.

And as i say whenever i chime in on these....i wanna come play.

I agree with Ewest, try it man. What could go wrong? I'm personally against gambusia but that's for you to decide. Red belly dace might be hard to find, unless you know of a bate store of something. Even then know that buying in bulk might not be pure red belly dace. I like the idea though, warmouths are cool looking, although I've never caught one.

Here are a couple long threads you may want to read. I don't know how they turned out. You could check with GW.

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthread...=true#Post89098

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=17297&page=1

Yes after catching 3 decent Warmouth I just got the idea. I mean it will be my first pond so I can get used to managing a pond before I setup my 5 acre trophy bass pond . I really like warmouth, they fight like a 1-2lb bass and they are extremely agressive and not as proflic as the green sunfish. I would make it relatively shallow but this is just a dream at the moment. I could expect the pond ranging from 1-8ft deep.

Very cool idea... I used to love catching warmouth and rockbass (or Goggle-eye as we called em') in the creeks around here...awesome fighters!

So far here is what I plan on stocking it with:
Freshwater Shrimp (Warmouth favorite diet says alabama dnr's site)
Crawfish( Another big food source)
Gambusia Minnows
Northen Red Belly Dace
Sailfin Molly
Fat Head Minnows
I'm going to choose another slender but long fish. Most likely going to be a shiner.

Pond will be at most 1/4 an acre. And about 6ft deep. They spawn in water 6 inches to 5ft deep near cover i.e. large rocks, stumps, vegetation, ect...

I don't think northern redbelly dace will live in the warm waters of GA. They are a northern 1/3 of the US fish. They can tolerate streams a little further south, but if they are to be pond fish they can't survive that far south.

Yes I just realized that.. I could possibly get away with not adding the Dace and just feeding them pellets. Seeing as I would have to hand raise every Warmouth that enters the pond they would be already pellet trained.
If I do wind up doing this, I am going to catch about 6 Warmouth and put them in a large water container of some sort in the 1000+ gallons. Raise all of them on minnows, worms and pellets. After a growing season I will remove all fish and weight them. The biggest female and biggest male will be chosen. Breed them together and during the spring put all their young once they are about 3" in the water container. Do the same thing. I will be recording sizes to make sure I get MONSTER Warmouth. Sound like a plan?

Hi Fishkeeper, Sounds like your gonna have some fun in a few years with the plans you have, but i got a question. Why limit yourself to a 6 foot deep pond? With sediment buildup overtime it will be 4 ft before you know it. I, like you live in the south where it gets HOT! 6 ft of water does not give the fish any chance to hide in deeper, colder water during the dog days of summer. Its not uncommon to see surface water temps in the 80s (or higher) down here. Those fish are just like us, they get lazy during those hot days and dont want to move around. If they dont move they dont feed, if they dont feed they dont grow to the MONSTER size you are wanting. If they do get to that size it will take many more years to achieve that size. I say you should make your pond deeper, if only in one spot. Give those guys a place to cool off so they can continue to grow at the fast rates you are hoping for.

True. I was fishing yesturday a 200 acre lake. It was 94F in 5ft of water. So I think a 10ft deep spot is more than needed. Thank You for pointing that out!
I am also planning on putting in an island 20ft from shore. Then loading 25ft of shore with rocks and covering the island in rocks. (Under water not the island itself). The island will be in either the back left or right corner and I will have it 20ft out from either shoreline and have rocks going in about 2-3ft off the shoreline in 3ft of water. Since these fish love shallow areas with cover most of the pond will be shallow.
The pond will be 150L by 75W. This is .26 an acre. Then with the island it will be around .255 so almost exactly 1/4 an acre.

10 ft sounds better, 13 to 15 ft would be great(even if its only a ten ft wide hole at the bottom). I have 12 ft average with a 18 ft hole the size of 2 trucks parked side by side in my .87 ac pond. Maybe its overkill but i dont think so.

If you aren't aerating this pond, depth isn't overly important. Deep areas in a pond simply become dead areas in the summer without aeration. Now if you are aerating, you open up those deep areas throughout the year. Warmouths are adapted to living in southern areas that are swampy and hot. I am not so sure they are overly concerned with how hot it gets. I don't think it affects them like it may other species.

CJ has a point about the aerating and i thought i read you were using one, but now after re-reading i must admit i dont see what i thought i did see. Maybe i'm biased, but after having air since the inception of my pond i cant see being without it. Just the same with a deep hole. Of course as CJ mentioned they are not worthwhile unless they are used together. I dont have WM so i cant be a case study to verify if my theory does work. But i can only theorize that more air and more depth=more feeding and more often no matter what type of fish it is. Heat causes slow fish period in my opinion. Just keep in mind i have no degree to back up that statement, just what i think makes sense.

Can warmouth stunt?

Every species in the family with WM except RES has been noted to stunt under the right circumstances. Some are less likely to stunt than others. It just depends on your situation and how its managed.

Thanks

Gamb -- I'm very glad you brought up this topic. I've been putting together a file of state record fish that come from ponds so Bob and I could use that info for a magazine article.

One of my biggest surprises is the number of state record warmouth that come from private waters. Why is this?

How many of you pondmeisters have warmouth in your ponds?

If so, did you put them there on purpose?

Or, are they an accidental member of the pond?

Thanks!!

Bump! Any warmouth help, thoughts, etc., out there??

About 5 years back, I caught a Rock Bass/Warmouth in my pond. He was maybe 8" long. I think I threw him up on the bank, but can't recall now.

That was the only one I've ever seen at my pond.

Fishkeeper, you might want to rethink the island in a pond that small. Islands force the water to be much shallower then you plan. In a pond that small (similar to mine) it will be hard to go much deeper than 10 feet. An island probably would make it impossible. It is also hard to keep the island the shape you want it. They tend to flatten out and become submerged.

Coach, I agree. A floating island would be better.

If I had to do my pond renovation over again, I would have removed the island.

Sunil, do you know if it was a rock bass(Ambloplites rupestris) which is common in cool water streams and the reservoirs they flow into or was it a warmouth(Lepomis gulosus) which is more common in stagnant many times swampy acidic bodies of water and is listed as endangered in PA by the PFBC.

My opinion on warmouths in ponds is they are often like GSF in some ways. I don't believe they are as capable of ascending small creeks to find new homes like GSF are so well known for doing. I do think anglers catch them, they look interesting and/or are misidentified as a BG and many toss a few here and there into their ponds. Although they may never become overly abundant, they do fill a small niche that isn't filled by BG, RES or LMB and can maintain a small subsisting population in ponds. I have caught and released warmouth into ponds before and have experienced this. It has been my experience that unlike GSF who nearly become non existent under competition with BG and LMB, warmouth do stick around in a bit larger numbers.

As to why so many record warmouth come from private ponds, I am not sure. Many private ponds tend to be very bass heavy leading to heavy predation on sunfish producing larger sunfish. One would think that small 6-12" bass would also compete with record size warmouth as well, so I am not sure that is the answer though.

CJ, I've always thought that what I caught was always called a Rock Bass.

Then, I thought that a Rock Bass was the same as a Warmouth.

So, Rock Bass is what I had caught in my pond. BTW, we catch them in Lake Erie all the time.