Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking Calling Bill Cody & others - perch/SMB stocking ?

Hello- I've been learning alot from the forum here and almost PM Bill directly, but thought it would be best to share my situation with every one.

Back ground- Last year we had a 1 acre (16' deepest, 8 ft average) warm water-stream feed, pond dug (centeral NY). As recommended on this site I constructed many pallet structures, tire pyramids, rock piles and a 14 x 16 ft dock. This March we stocked the pond with a cooler of fat heads and golden shiners. There are little fat heads every where!

Stocking plan. I would like to be a little unconventional (compared to all the neighboring sunfish/ LMB ponds) and stock perch/ SMB. I'm chomping at the bit to start stocking.

?'s-
Is it to early?

Also, my plan is to stock the pond myself from fish from a near by lake. How many perch/ SMB should I stock? What size perch and SMB should I stock? (I'm looking at this as a slow, progressive, fun stocking method)

The last heavy rain washed a few sunfish from the neighbors pond down- will this pose a problem with my plan?

I also put pond dye in to control weeds - any thoughts?

Thanks a bunch, Chris

Chris we have been discussing alternative stocking schemes lately. You really should check out the last 2 PB issues where Dr Mark Cornwell a fisheries professor at SUNY-Cobleskill in Cobleskill, New York writes about NY ponds using FH , Gshiners and SMB as an option rather than BG/LMB. We are talking about the same subject on the following current thread.

http://www.pondboss.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=5;t=000493;p=1#000005

I think it's likely the volunteer sunfish will become established, sooner or later. So you'll probably have to figure on managing them as well. Do you know what kind your neighbor has?

Hi Chris and welcome to the forum. I am up in Rochester area up near lake ontairo (about 300 yrds away ) I setup my pond to be a SMB and Perch pond. I did as you did by putting the FH in the fall. I waited until the summer after that ( like you ) to put in the YP. I put in 2-3 inch fry at that time. There is a great place to get them near you ( If you like I can provide that to you ) I left them in and waited until the next spring to put in the SMB. I put those in when the supplier had them at around 3 -5 inches. By the way do you have an areation system in the pond?

I know it is hard to wait and see time passing, but I can tell you it pays off big time to let the food chain establish and let each one gain hold prior to moving on to the next link in the food chain. Thus far I have not had any fish kill and I have the bass jumping nightly and the perch reproducing and the FH minnows are still around in enough numbers to feed the others without me adding anything to the pond.

If you have any questions please feel free to give me a shout and we can talk upstate YP and SMB ponds.

Good luck and enjoy the fun of building the eco system.

lavarock64, you can speed up the process and essentially get a "turn key" fishing lake. Like getting "turn key" landscaping, it costs more. You have to pay someone for raising the fish for you to the size you want in your lake. Lots of people do this with landscaping and it might be worth it to you to do this also. Only you can decide.

LR64 - The intruder sunfish will be a complicating problem especially if they are green sunfish. Almost every stream in the eastern midwest has GS in it. GS, bgill and yellow bullheads from a creek overflow evenutally ruined my perch-SMB pond. Pond has been drained and now converted to a minnow-shiner raising pond.

Are you sure that some of those little "everywhere" fatheads are not gshiners and or small 1/2" sunfish? Stream run GS will spawn at 3" long.

You will definately also have a sunfish spawn this spring-summer (2006).

It is definately not too early to stock perch or fingerling SMB since you WILL have young-of year (YOY) sunfish this fall. If you did not have YOY sunfish, I would wait till yperch have spawned once before adding SMB. I think you should stock fingerlings or subadults as soon as you can get them. SMB fingerlings or juveniles will probably be available from Hicklings - NY in fall AND spring 07. Otherwise young SMB are hard to locate in spring. Since you want to catch your own stock, then start catching. I am not sure how well stocking a few (10-30) juvenile to subadult (5"-8") SMB will work compared to a full compliment (100) of fingerlings or juveniles (2"-6") in your situation since you now have sunfish. ADDITIONAL SPECIES ALWAYS COMPICATES MANAGING A FISHERY!. Adding adult or larger SMB (12-14") will, I think, result in their selectively eating primarily your newly introduced perch (4"-6") and larger 2007 breeder minnows/shiners instead of sunfish. I have found that wild run SMB tend to eat larger food items than pond raised SMB.

PERCH In your case 100-150 adult perch are not too many to stock for one acre. Depending on the growth rate of perch in your supply lake, perch at 3"-4" maybe 5" this time of year (July) will probably be mostly males from 2005 year class. Some of the 4"-5" perch could be females from 2005 year class. Perch larger than 5" caught now will be about a 50% mixture of males and females from the pre-2005 year classes. Fifty to 100 adult perch (4"-10") stocked before winter 06 will be in good spawning condition to give you ample YOY perch next year, IF the 2007 spring weather is normal in upstate NY.

The main thing you will always have to watch is the numbers of YOY sunfish or bgill. Do not let them get out of control. Y.perch and SMB will not always have a successful spawn each year whereas sunfish and BG will always produce and abundant crop of YOY fish. BG and GS overall will aalways suppress perch and SMB fry survival.

Rooted weed growth will also favor sunfish survival which you do not want. Try to keep weeds to a minimum so SMB and larger perch can find small sunfish. Whenever you have a poor SMB or perch hatch make sure the YOY sunfish are heavily reduced that same year by whatever method.

Keep us informed by locating and updating this specific topic about the progress of your fishery.

Bill,

As stated in your previous post, your YP/SMB pond was eventually ruined by unwanted species from creek overflow. How long did it take for this to occur and what were the problems?

One of my future projects is to renovate an existing pond and experiment with a YP/SMB combination. However, this pond receives runoff from an intermittent stream which I know has been an avenue for yellow bullheads. Based on your experience, do you feel this would be a waste of time to attempt this combination?


Eric,

Your YP/SMB pond mimics the situation I have here. Have you noticed any unwanted species in your pond yet?

Not many unwanted species yet. I got a few small trout that made it in after the first year of perch. I dont think they made it once in the pond. My pond is too warm and the perch were too hungry.

I have added log perch and there was one or two walleye that made it in when we got the fry from the dealer. I havent seen much of them once they are in there. I have a cement wall and feeder tubes into the pond that are now screened. Thus nothing can make itin unless it goes over the top or is smaller than 1/16th of an inch in size.

I fell I have been very lucky to keep things in balance thus far. Even when the heron comes in I don't see any other species hanging on for deal life on his legs

I think main reason for mine is that I am a small pond near Lake Ontario, Thus most of the traffic goes there for birds and suck and I only get the stray and the seasonal creek has very few other ponds/opportunites to pick up other fish and I screen things out before I let it into my pond.

For me, once the intruder fish of bluegill, green sunfish and bullheads started spawning and the SMB had their first poor hatch, bass and perch started going down hill. Dense rooted vegetation favored survival of GS and BG, despite removal of lots of YOY GS and BG, SMbass and perch populations continued to decline. I took five years for the fishery to decline to where I was not satisfied with it. When I renovated I was surprised to see how few quality fish remained.

Bill,

In previous YP/SMB posts the importance of weed cover, for FH minnow survival, has been discussed. If your pond did not have the dense vegetation and you continued the removal of YOY GS/BG, do you feel the YP/SMB combo could of prevailed? Sounds like a delicate balancing act.

I assume this is because of their large mouths and fish eating tendencies?

I am pretty sure I have never encountered a green sunfish in NY. Russ, Eric, etc, how often do you encounter GSunfish? Both the NY DEC and Cornell state the fish is present in NY but neither provide much info. I once found this distribution map but I don't think it is complete.

Bill and others-

Thanks for the replies, I think I asked this just in time to try and make my stocking strategy work.

Bill I would like to discuss some of your recommendations directly.

The sunfish are worse than I thought. I scoped out the pond and saw around 10 spawning beds as well as a group of 10-12 sunfish hanging around one of my pallet structures.

Are you sure that some of those little "everywhere" fatheads are not gshiners and or small 1/2" sunfish? They very well could be Gshiners or sunfish, I'll see if I can find out.

Reading your stocking suggestions and basing this strategy on the fact the sunfish are already spawning. Does 150 fingerling perch and 100 fingerling smb sound right? I may can my stocking strategy from the lake given the current situation. The time that I would be spending on the lake I will use to thin the sunfish ranks.

do you have the # for Hicklings?

There is another hatchery near seneca falls. Any idea of the name and # there?

Thanks again, Chris

Jayman,

Since I've been messing with ponds, I cannot recall ever encountering GSF. Perhaps I should clarify that my main concern are unwanted species in general. Each of my two ponds is supplied by seperate intermittent streams however these two streams join forces just north of the two ponds, with the final dumping ground being the Hudson River.

I can install fish gates to try and control the unwanted species but during spring snow melt and/or heavy rains, I doubt these gates would be effective. Case in point being my
BG pond. I now have eels, LMB and shiners which I'm sure found there way in during heavy runoff times. I suspect bullheads will also find there way in like they did in my other pond.

It would be fun to expert with a YP/SMB only pond but given my situation, I'm curious to hear the thoughts of the experts.

Jayman:

I can honestly say in my entire fishing career here in NY state that I have never seen a green sunfish. (its hard to catch them on muskey plugs ) But seriously I have never seen one in all the fishing I have done throughout NY state.

Lavarock:

You might want to look through this list for fish suppliers. It was the 2003 listing from Cornell and I am not making comment as to which one is good or not but here it is for your review:
http://fish.dnr.cornell.edu/Pond/fishsuppliers.htm

As for Hicklings here is the information you were looking for:

Hickling's Fish Farm, 143 Hickling Road, Edmeston, NY 13335

Owner: Hickling, Vincent (607) 965-8488

Stocks:
Brook, Brown & Rainbow Trout, L.M. Bass, S.M. Bass, Black Crappie, Yellow Perch, Walleye, Bluegill, Fathead Minnows


I hope that this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions as I have used a few of these guys.

Well, frustration is slowly starting to set in. I've called hatcheries within 3 hrs. drive on the list and none have both the perch/ SMB for stocking. (Hicklings was washed out with the flooding, others have either stopped raising SMB due to lack of demand and others have just closed up shop due to regulations). Next week we will be renting a cottage on a near by lake and our mission of the week is to see how many perch we can get into the pond. I'll post up the results. I caught 3 small SMB last night from a local trib and stocked (slow going).

At this point I'm still building the food chain by traping crayfish from local creeks. This is going very well and I'm averaging 20 nice crayfish at a time. I've found the magic bait (chunked lake trout). How many of these critters should I stock in the 1 acre pond?

I'll keep posting results, Chris

Chris, give my fish guy a call, John Sproch, Keystone Aquaculture, 717-350-4431. He's out of Harrisburg, PA., but he delivers.

He has supplied me with both Yellow Perch and Smallmouth before. I believe he can still get the Yellow Perch. As far as Smallmouth, I don't know if he still has a source.

As far as the crawdad stocking, I would do the trapping thing whenever you can. However, there is a type of crawfish ("rusticus" something..) that is generally not recommended as it will take over ie/ kill all other types of crayfish.

Here is a link to suppliment Sunil's post on rusty crayfish.

http://www.pondboss.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=6;t=000055#000003

Lavarock, I am glad to see your getting crayfish. That is how I got mine ( from small local creek ) From what I have been told and have seen, about 100 crayfish (breeder size >2 inches ) is good per surface acre. They do multiply quickly. If however you have some larger fish in the pond (such as the SMB and Perch you just added) I would add more than that.

I have found that with Crayfish you will not have too many. If there are too many of them they will walk off and find new locations to live. But with some fish already in the pond many of them will become snacks as they try to find homes.

I am sorry to hear about the lack of places to go for the SMB and YP. I hope that your catch and restock method works well for you. It certainly is a more fun way and potentially less expensive way to do stocking.

Your distribution map for GS was created from old data sets. My Atlas of North American Freshwater Fishes (1980) shows your map as the Former Distribution; Present distribution of GS includes all of NY except the northern upper third of the state.

Hopefully your sunfish are pumpkinseeds. They will be a lot less of a fish management problem than GS. Try to catch one of the males guarding the nest and get a close-up photo. I will try to identify the fish just from a photo. If you drag a rake through the sunfish nests every few (4-6) days you will prevent a lot of the eggs from hatching.

Do your best to try and locate some fingerling SMB for stocking this fall. Have you checked with Zetts Fish Hatchery in Drifting PA? They send fish air freight. SMB will help control this years sunfish that have hatched.

You will need to get yourself some various sizes of fish traps for help with fish monitoring, thinning and management. Hopefully Pond Boss magazine will have an article before next spring about building homemade fish traps. Several styles of fish traps are available for purchase on the internet and in fish supply stores. Longer (20-50 ft) minnow seines ($25-$100) pulled through the shallows and or beach areas will catch a lot of small fish.

Pondboss sure is wealth of info., I'm glad I found you guys. I will try to identify the crayfish I've been stocking as well as if the sunfish are GS, Pumpkin seeds or Bluegills.

My stocking program went well last night. I was able to stock 11 more SMB (9 in the 6-8 inch range and 2 in the 10-12 inch range). I tried a different trib and low and behold if I did'nt catch 4 10" rainbows (I threw them back as I'm not sure if they would survive in the warmer water of the pond).

I'll be back w/ updates, Chris

LR64,
This site may help you identify crafish from your area. NY may have some crayfish species not reported from PA. The crayfish that you are collecting are probably common species and will likely be in the PA identification key.

http://www.lhup.edu/tnuttall/crayfish%20figures.htm

Keep in mind that since you are putting in SMB in the 6"-12 range you will need to stock larger sized perch (4"-8")to improve the perch survival rate. Most of the 2"-4" perch that you stock initially will be bass food. A first perch spawn will provide enough young perch to allow for predation and thinning of the first perch year class.

Again, thanks for the advise guys. I have not tried to identify the sunfish, but it is on my to-do's.

We put a BIG dent in the stocking situation while at the rented cottage. The tally for the week was 80 perch (from 6-12 inches), average about 8 inches and a total of 35 small mouth bass (averaging around 8 inches, (one was 14 inches). I've also been making runs twice a week with crayfish.

The stocking was A LOT of fun. I told my 2 nephews that they would get a quarter for every perch/ SMB they caught. You should have seen those guys go!!! It's amazing how two little boys from the city all of a sudden learn how to put a worm on a jig and take a fish off of a hook when a little coin is involved.

SO, where are we at???? Should I try to get more perch?, More SMB? In the fall I should be able to get some larger SMB, should I stick with the small ones to get the perch established?

Thanks again for the advice, it's been a blast.
Chris