Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain THANK YOU!

We are in the last day of pond building. Hubby decided that he wanted a 1/2 acre pond on our 8A property. Now that its built and we had TONS of dirt molded into landscape mounds so we don't see the neighbor building a house RIGHT next to ours FACING OURS I'm excited. We are in NE Ohio (and at the bottom of a huge hill) so we should be filled by spring with fingers crossed. Im ELATED that I ran into this forum. Can't wait to get stocking!

Welcome to Pond Boss Shawn!!! You and your hubby will learn a lot just from this site.

Good Luck on your new pond.

howdy from another northeastern buckeye!

Hello over there from a NW Ohio pond owner. We finsished our 1/10 acre pond about this time last year. Stocked it with FH in april and had 10s of thousands by mid summer. Introduced RBT a little less than 1 month ago for a harvest in the spring. The trout are doing great on supplemental pellets and a 24 hour minnow buffet.

The highlight of my day is to hand feed them every evening with a cocktail in one hand and cigar in the other.

Welcome to pond ownership I don't know that I haver done anything that seems to satisfy so many interests in thing.

Welcome Shawn!!

Any stocking plan in mind for a permanent fishery?

First - welcome to Pond Boss. We're glad you found us. The way you've described things, it sounds like you've done some great things to your property.

You might be surprised how fast your pond might actually fill. We expanded a small settlement/minnow pond into a 1/4 acre specialty "put-and-take" pond this past April. We got a big rain storm about a few days after the heavy equipment rolled off the site. The pond filled up in a couple of days, and has stayed full ever since. We started stocking two weeks later with minnows, hybrid sunfish, redear sunfish, and channel catfish. We hope to put hybrid striped bass and golden trout in this small impoundment when we get back from the Pond Boss 5 conference in a couple of weeks.

What we did is not a generally recommended combination of fish suggested for new ponds, nor new pond owners. But, it shows the diversity of what can be done, even with relatively small ponds.

However, with a half acre pond, your pond is big enough to include some exciting fish -- both self-sustaining populations like bass and blugill, and put-and-take fish, like catfish, hybrid striped bass, and winter trout. There are many options, and Ohio is a great place to raise a wide variety of different kinds of fish in a half-acre pond.

Like Waterbug said "The highlight of my day is to hand feed them every evening with a cocktail in one hand and cigar in the other."

There is nothing more fun than to watch your fish come to see you at feeding time, whether they are rosey red minnows, bluegill, or big fat catfish. Although I love them all, winter trout are probably the most fun to watch because they will jump clear out of the water and dance on their tail before belly flopping back into the pond -- all just for a pellet floating on the water surface.

And, like Rex (Rainman) asked "Any stocking plan in mind for a permanent fishery?"

So, before you start to stock, ask lots of questions here. Don't let the local fish dealer or fish truck try to talk you into a stocking plan, unless it happens to be someone you know and really trust. They are there to sell fish, and not are as objective as they could be.

One thing you will see and hear a lot here on the forum is -- "what are the goals for your pond?" When you can come up with that answer, a few really good stocking plans can be quickly recommended.

Regards,
Ken

An update for other new pond owners. The RBT will have been in their new home for one month tomorrow. It has been interesting in that after the better part of 20 years of chasing their cousins, the Steelhead and Browns in natural rivers around the globe I am coming to realize how little I really now about these creatures and their habits.

While I would like to think that my 1000's of hours spent studying the trout family in the wild that I had a pretty good handle on how weather effects their feeding habits but I did not know what I thought I did. They are down right moody. Hours, heck hours 10ths of hours, 0.10 in barometric pressure and 1 degree in temp can all have an effect.

This is going to be a very interesting winter until next spring's harvest.

So far the only known losses are one after transplant and one a week later. I am sure there could have been others I did not see but based on tonight's feeding hour, the many that have survived are gaining strength and their competitive nature at the dinner table is up 100%. Great fun, great fun. I would recomend pond ownership and stocking of the same to anyone and of course to recomend they study up here. What an amazing resource. Thanks everyone.

Trout are always a blast for winter and a spring harvest....

I like to stock these because they're easier to see swimming in the pond. They seem to be more agressive towards lures than normally colored rainbows too.

Nice looking GT. I caught a few of those in a river down in West Virgina but it was more than a dozen years ago and I don't remember the location anymore. They seemed to be more agressive in the river than rainbows then. I do remember though that they seemed to go on the bite much later in the morning than most any other trout speieces though. It seemed a complete waste of time heading to the river before 9:00 in the morning in the spring. I was not used to that having spent a life time wading into the water before first light waiting for that first one to surface on the morning hatch.