Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Redear and hybrid striped bass sole stocking

Here’s a thought for the day- has anyone tried RE and HSB in a small pond with feeding? I’m the soon to be owner of a new tiny pond (needed backfill material elsewhere on the property) and the thought occurred to me that this combination might possibly work with some very selective harvesting. As RE don’t reproduce at the rate of BG, I also wonder if the HSB would be able to control their population despite their smaller mouths, or if everyone would gather around the feeder singing kumbaya while waiting for the pellets to drop?

Overall, about a 0.1 acre pond. Goal would be to go out a couple times per year and bring home a fish dinner. This is the holdover pond until I get the 2.5 acre dream pond that’s planned out, so thought I’d try to do something fun in the meanwhile!

How many would you stock, and remove at what rate? Welcoming all comments, criticisms, or other wild laboratory tests that could be tried out on this little spot.

I've got a 1/10 acre sediment pond that I have used to grow out CNBG, then later LMB (both for stocking in my 3 acre main pond) and right now growing out some SMB.

My 1/10th acre sediment pond

You can actually raise a lot of fish in 1/10th acre. To maximize it install aeration and feed the fish with high quality fish food. I think the secret is harvest. You need to be willing to fish it and remove fish to maintain a healthy population and keep your the fish from being too thick and stunting.

I have a one acre pond with RES and SMB. It is not old enough to give an opinion on how good it eventually will be, but I have already had recruitment of SMB and been removing quite a few (which is great in my case because I have other ponds to stock the excess SMB in).

My RES and SMB pond construction and stocking thread

I bet the RES and HSB combo would work fine as long as you fed the HSB. The RES really do not take to feed well without training. There are methods of feed training RES (kind of diffficult) but if you stock ordinary fingerling RES consider them untrained and unlikely to eat fish food to any significant degree. Shorty and Nedoc are a couple of go to guys for RES feed training. RES are not prone to coming to the surface to feed like BG will.

Edit: this is my non expert opinion about stocking. The experts would have better ideas. I stocked 100 LMB and a year later removed about 40 in the 12"+- range. If it were me, I would stock 50-100 RES and let them go a year before stocking the HSB. Then stock 50 HSB. Yes that is terribly over stocked. But feed them well and start removing some when they get a foot long. Keep removing more as they grow till you get down to about a dozen to grow to good size. Catch and remove RES too. By over stocking you can have some fun catching and managing the population while waiting on the rest to grow bigger. If you are not going to actively remove fish, stock much lower numbers or you will end up with stunted fish. It is surprising the first year growth you can get out of initially stocked fish if fed. But if you over stock you need to remove some before the second season.

Given your location (SW Ohio) assuming RES survive there then RES and HSB will work along the plan noted by snrub. I would also add FH so that all fish HSB and RES will have a source of true fish lipids in addition to feed.

I'd be shocked if RES and HSB don't work well together. But as Eric said, the concern may be if the RES survive as far north as you are.

That’s the line of thinking I had as well John. Really do appreciate the well thought out rationale. The HSB stocking sounds extreme at first glance but then that’s when compared to ‘normal’ stocking rates that are sustainable. Quickly removing and eating a few would do the trick in a hurry.

As for the RES surviving the winters, I’ve not heard of any difficulties in this area, quite a bit warmer than the frozen tundra of the northern part of the state! Caught a few in local ponds last year actually. Plus, will be getting them from a local (less than 15 miles away) professional propagator in the hopes that they are more adapted to the local climate.

Of course all these thoughts and beliefs are prone to actual field verification! The best part of pond management is seeing how things play out on the ground.

GeoSteve - If you go ahead with your RES-HSB plan please return and keep us updated as the fishery progress. We will learn from your new idea fish project.

NEDOC I was under the impression that NE winters can be more savage, cold, long and with more ice thickness than winters in SW MI. We may have some shelter from wind and cold from the warm lake MI, but we have more lake effect snow. RES are found naturally in a few lakes here. I'm trying to establish some in my pond but I can't sample their numbers because I can't get them to bite on my bait.

I saw lots of YOY RES in the past but this past spring didn't see as many. I didn't see spawning beds last summer either.

Do those in northern OH or IN have problems with RES surviving in their ponds?

Geosteve I had a great visit at Nedoc's place last year and he is growing some monster RES by feeding them cut up fish fillets. I watched some frying pan size ones come up to near the surface to take the fish strips being tossed out. So if a person wants to spend the time and effort, RES can be a formidable sport fish brim. Nedoc is doing some really neat stuff with fish feeding.

In my 1/20th acre forage pond I have RES and currently GSH (originally FHM) and I am pretty sure at least some of my RES are eating some feed that sinks and makes it to the bottom. The reason I think so is that when I use the cast net I get more RES per throw and larger ones from the feed area when I have just fed compared to not feeding. I feed the GSH a little. It could be the RES are just attracted to the feeding activity of the GSH and are not really eating any of the feed. But my feeling is a few have learned to eat pellets without specific training effort.

I had much better luck with RES feeding on Optimal than Aquamax. But it is absolutely imperative to be feeding during low light conditions (within 30 min of sunrise or sunset) and it helps to be consistent with the times you feed them. They will absolutely not take a floating feed with bright skies.

Good points. Come to think of it, my observations were always just before dusk and sometimes getting dark enough to use a flashlight for positive species ID. That is when I spent a lot of evenings capturing RES to transfer to other ponds. So your comment makes a lot of sense. I was also feeding mostly Optimal in that pond although some AM MVP too.

The few times I used a cast net mid day my take of RES was much less. Not worth the effort. By feeding in one area just before sunset or about sunset, then throwing the cast net in a few throws I could have 50 3" RES to transfer.

some results of cast net throws This starts at 2017 and I no longer dump the fish on the grass to ID and sort them. Didn't take many pictures in 2018 but caught and transferred hundreds and hundreds of RES fingerlings. Now I dump the fish from the cast net directly into one 5 gallon bucket and immediately sort into other water filled buckets.

If I want to catch RES I use the cast net. If I want to remove GSF or hybrids, I use a minnow trap or minnow trap with enlarged opening. I keep a couple of minnow traps in most of the summer.

One other advantage of overstockong in such a small BOW is it gives you some cushion if you lose some fish to predation. GBH, cormorants, etc. can put the hurt to a small pond in a hurry. Having some extra in the beginning might be beneficial should you lose some.

Cody note - this thread has been copied to the Common Q&A Archives under RES and HSB topics

I have had RES eat pellets for years. They are not as active as the BG but will eat pellets in competition with BG. I do think they eat the pellets as they sink and even off the bottom. No doubt they do not train as easily as BG and hatcheries don't spend time on the effort.