Greetings from Johnson County, Indiana! First, thanks to all who contribute to these forums. I have absorbed much knowledge over the past several months and thought it was about time I registered as a member.
A little about me and my pond: My wife and I bought our 10 1/2 acres in 2016 and moved into our new pole barn home in November 2019. Our pond was dug last August - just in time to not get any significant rain for months. It's around a half acre of surface water (will have to wait until Google takes our picture again to get a more accurate measurement) and we are now about 6 inches from being full.
We have a windmill aerator running and the local fishery has an order pending for whenever they start delivering again. It's getting very exciting around here! Our plan for this pond is to (eventually) do some lazy fishing, attract some wildlife, and just enjoy being around it.
Welcome from all of us. We hope you like the forum and post often. We love a good picture by the way. I would love for google maps to do an update soon.
Chris, welcome! When us slightly 'jaded' or 'experienced' pond owners hear that a fish order is on its way we start wondering if we can help avoid any potential pitfalls (in planning or in unnecessary cost)
Can you share your goals for stocking? What type of fishing are you hoping for? Have you considered giving some time to let the forage base develop before stocking predators? I'm not sure how much time you have to review the archives or search around the pondboss forum. There is a ton of really good advice that can help you. BUT!!! we only have one chance to help you if your pond truly is a blank slate. You have one of the most incredible opportunities here if you have an empty pond to plan everything and to learn from others who wish they could do it over. I certainly would have loved to have spent hours reading and asking questions on this forum prior to turning fish loose in my pond.
So - Anything in the pond now? Goals? What was your plan for timing of forage and predators? If you did get hooked by the 'fish package' deal can you tell us what the recommended package was?
Tell us about your windmill? How deep is the diffuser and how many diffusers? Hopefully it is windy by you as in the dog days of summer many of us find we need constant (and I might add preferably night time only ) aeration to keep the fish happy. That could be something to consider in the future.
As far as my goal for stocking the pond, I mainly just want to keep it healthy. I don't care about raising trophy fish filling the freezer. Don't get me wrong, I love to fish, but mostly for relaxation, not for specific results.
At this point I am planning to stock a mix of bluegill, sunfish, LMB, of course FHM and a few grass carp. After explaining my goals to the fishery they recommended stocking all at once but stocking the predators in a small enough size that that the forage fish would still be ok to get established. I will say that through our building process here I had the opportunity to talk to a lot of other local pond owners and this fishery was highly regarded by all of them and the fishery staff did ask a lot of questions about my goals before making a recommendation. Thoughts?
The pond has no connection to other bodies of water and at this point contains only some crawdads that were already here on the property. Not sure if they appreciated the improvement, but one did come out to greet me while I was cleaning a bit of straw from the water's edge.
My windmill stands 27' tall and with the flat farm field around our property it catches a wind from the west a pretty good amount of the time. We knew it wasn't necessarily the ideal aeration system, but we loved the idea of a windmill on the property for aesthetic reasons so we figured why not attempt to let it have a practical application. It currently runs a single diffuser but I ran the line such that I could easily add to it if necessary. The pond is between 9 and 10 feet deep and the diffuser sits about 16" off the bottom.
I'll plan to get a couple of updated pictures tomorrow. Thanks in advance for any in insights you're willing to share!
More questions... What type of bluegill? Northern? Hybrid? What type of sunfish? IF LMB are the chief predator of your fishery you will thank yourself later if you put in about half of the 'recommended' number. Almost every pond owner in a 'typically stocked' pond ends up with too many LMB and stunted LMB. They are prolific spawners and often pondowners find it require lots of time catching and removing to keep enough forage food in the pond to feed all the bass.
I don't have experience with this balance of bluegill,sunfish, and LMB so I can't speak personally but since almost every northern pond ends up being a bluegill/lmb pond almost everyone struggles with this balance.
If your goal is to catch lots of panfish and LMB and to have kids have fun then this should be an OK start but I would advise posting numbers of stockers and asking for advice from others. If you aren't fussy about LMB size or numbers or panfish size or numbers then it should be a neat experience.
Consider adding tilapia as a bonus forage fish at some point. You probably don't have a huge algae problem in a new pond but they are fun to watch, they clean up the algae and can be netted or caught in the fall for great filets. They also feed the bass (if you stock mature size adults that can pull off a spawn in the shorter growing season of Indiana) which takes pressure off your forage base.
Having suitable spawning structure and places for your bluegill/sunfish will also help get more young fish to serve as food for your hungry bass in years to come.
Don't forget YP and pellet trained if you can source them. That sets up a lot of joy handfeeding or machine feeding your YP, provides fun and tasty fish to catch, and the YP end up training the panfish to come for pellets. They are a blast to catch in all seasons, but through the ice is really a treat.
200 Bluegill (no type specified) 50 Hybrid Bluegill 50 Redear Sunfish 100 Large Mouth Bass 10 lbs Fathead Minnows 6 Triplooid Grass Carp (after reading some other threads this seems like it may be too many?)
I don't know much about tilapia aside from how tasty they are on the dinner plate so that is something I will definitely look into as a future addition.
Thanks for the suggestion about spawning structure. I did build and place some artificial habitat while the pond was mostly empty although looking back, I didn't build it with any particular species or activity in mind. Just took ideas I found online and built some things with leftover materials from other projects. More research!
Lastly, here are a couple pictures of the current state of things:
Hopefully one of the pros will chime in soon on the stocking. But from what I've learned on here that sounds like about double or more of the amount of LMB you should stock depending on your goals. You might want to go up on the BG depending on your goals. I think most say not to add the Grass Carp to soon in a new pond. Most will also say not to add the LMB until the fall or next spring.
It is best to stock forage fish before predator fish. I also stock a lot less predators and let them spawn. Started my SMB in a 1 acre pond with 10 fish stocked in consecutive years. If you are not in a hurry, this can work very well. I also recommend holding off on grass carp until you have unwanted weed growth. Folks often overstock these and find they cannot grow any plants. I considered these in my SMB pond when curly leaf pondweed got out of hand, but papershell crayfish seemed to almost eliminate this issue.
I went through a similar process last year with a pond that is about 0.58 surface acres and an average of 6.5-7' deep (bowl-shaped).
In March 2020 I stocked 10lb FHM, 200 3" BG, 100 3" RES, 100 3" HBG. I bought all my fish from Andry's Fish Farm via their truck that hits multiple sites throughout the month.
In April I started feeding Optimal Junior to accelerate the growth of my initial stockers.
In September 2020, I stocked 50 5" LMB, 50 4" BG, 50 4" HBG. By this time, I had fatheads ALL OVER the shallows - tens of thousands of them - along with HBG that were 8"+ long and 7oz, and BG that were 7" long and 4.5oz. Pretty sure I had at at least a couple BG spawns given the dozens of nests I saw in my pea gravel "boat launch" area.
If you plan to stock 100 LMB, you need a lot more BG and FHM to provide forage base IMO and I'd definitely stock the bass in the fall after the forage base has a full spring/summer to grow and reproduce.
I would not recommend stocking the Triploid Grass Carp until you have an underwater weed problem. If no weeds are present, they could root around the bottom looking for things to eat and that will muddy the water. You can always add them later. Sort of like putting a band aid on before you get cut.......
Stock a lot more bluegills. 500 or more. Stock way less bass, 25 to 50 max. I'd recommend stocking enough Redear Sunfish to make up 1/3 your panfish stocking numbers. Hybrid Bluegills will grow faster than the other Bluegills for a few years, and are great to have in a pond that kids fish. If no kids, you don't "have to" stock them, they can eat small fish (i.e. fatheads) the same size that a 7" largemouth bass can, so your forage base could suffer.
Hopefully the windmill gets its wind from the west, it is supposed to be taller than the tallest tree around to function properly. You might want to think about adding a grid based aeration system in a few years once the biochemical demand in the pond gets larger.
Put some cover in the pond for the Fatheads to spawn on, if not they won't last a year and a half. Even with the spawning cover, I doubt you will see them past year 3 if you are lucky.
esshup - Thanks for the suggestions. At this point I'm leaning toward holding off on the bass and the grass carp for now. Any thoughts on how many FHM to start with?
Regarding the windmill, we placed it where we did based on observing the weather here for the past couple years and the wind comes from the west a good 80% of the time. I figured it probably wouldn't be the total of our aeration solution but my wife loved the idea of having it and since she pretty well let's me do whatever i want when it comes to the outdoors, i wanted to make her happy. We'll see how it does.
![[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]](https://i.imgur.com/M1E0LCC.jpg)
