Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose 1.1 acre pond in middle tennesse

Keep feeding them what they will eat in 15 minutes or less, depending on your pocketbook.

Finally, I have seen were either CNBG or RES have spawned. I assume they are CBNG. Now I am thinking of adding bass in october. I have tens of thousand FHM, they spawn every month. I am amazed at how fast these fish grow on Optimal Bluegill Jr. mixed with Aqua Maxx starter ( the FHM'S really eat that)

Pond is 1.1 acre, I have stocked 300 CNBG ( june 1) 400 RES ( May 1) I am going to add 100 Large mouth bass in october. I was thinking about adding another 50 CNBG

If you want the LMB to grow bigger faster reduce the 100 stockers to 55-70 and you will see 20-30% more LMB growth of those first set of LMB compared to stocking 100. If LMB more numbers of LMB are a goal then stock the 100. The original LMB stockers will grow fast until the first year class of hatched bass grow to 6"- 8" then the pond may start running low on small fish limiting fish LMB growth.

I do not care about bass, I am trying to grow 2lb CNBG or RES. I am only stocking bass to control Bream. The CNBG I would add would be 3 to 5 inch. I was thinking that would make it more 50 50. What do you guys do about Blue Heron? I know what I am doing! SIck ot them

Langster - What state are you in??
Okay GOALS are very important . if you are trying to grow trophy panfish as in CNBG & RES then you really need to stock more LMB not fewer. If it were my pond and BG & RES have spawned I would stock more than 100 LMB in 1.1ac, maybe up to 150/ac. To get best "BG" growth long term one needs heavy predation of always the current year class of panfish to keep their numbers low density so they always have plenty of excess food for optimum growth. Feeding pellets helps with maintaining abundant food, however too many BG without proper harvest results in less than an optimum trophy fishery. Too many fish and in limited water area with excess pellet feeding eventually results in decreased water quality and a less than optimum fishery.

Another option rather than 100+ LMB per acre would be to manually by trapping and or seining shallows to thin the current year class of sunfish in their first 1-2 years of life.

Once pond is stocked with bass, then it becomes your management task to properly harvest the "BG" crop to optimize "BG" growth in terms of long term rapid growth. Proper Harvest of BG involves best numbers to remove,,. best sizes to remove,, and focus harvest on removing a higher percentage of females compared to males. Bull male BG influence how well and how fast the younger males or each year class grow. It is a bullying affect of biggest males suppressing maturity of the young males that enables them to achieve the best growth rate.

See this lengthy discussion about growing the biggest and best BG from our Archives. IMO the information also applies to RES.
https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=286872#Post286872

That is great info. I will stock more bass then. Thank you this forum is great!

You can always remove some 10"-14" bass if you decide that is necessary because they are eating too many small "BG". However I doubt this would be needed. Generally the more bass you have per acre the bigger and fewer the BG will be.

My fish guy came on September 1st and was not coming back in October. So I put 135 Large Mouth Bass in on first and they seem to be doing well. They got plenty of FHM to eat and baby coppernose

You will not find better people and service than the folks at Optimal Fish Food. I ordered Optimal Jr. and got Optimal Bluegill. Which I was going to get some of that soon to mix with Optimal Jr. E-mailed them and ordered another bag of Optimal Jr. Within 30 minutes the owner of the company called me and offered me free replacement bag. I told him it was not a big deal because soon I was going to be ordering the Optimal Bluegill anyway. So I would just keep it and buy another bag of Optimal Jr.

Yesterday I got my Optimal Jr. and a nice Optimal hat and Optimal coaster. Not only is the product the best on the market but the customer service is awesome.

I find it hard to believe but last weekend, my CNBG went on bed yet again and it is October. Usually they do not feed as well for a couple of days. However it has been a week and the CNBG just are lethargic and not feeding well at all. Could that be cooler weather? The coppernose normally feed like piranha. Now they eat much slower and not as many at a time. All summer you could see "V's" coming when I got out of the truck. My RES are still feeding and so are the minnows. Also I have had the bass in the pond since september 1. And I have yet to see the first bass since I released 135 of them. Is that normal?

I watched some minnows being chased out of the water the other evening and thought that was bass. It was not, it was school of RES running the minnows and they are really growing.

It has been very dry here but we got 3 inch rain the other day and I thought that would help them take food better. But it did not. Usually when I have seen this only lasted couple of days this time it has been a week.

Langster, I wouldn't be too alarmed that you haven't seen any of your (135) LMB yet. It does suck waiting to see them though.

My fish started feeding again yesterday. I dont understand unless it is the cooler weather and fish had to adapt. They had not fed well in 10 days, but yesterday was back to feeding. But I would like to see a bass

Been out the last few sunny days and checking the pond. Pond is full water looks great and it is very clear now. See lots Copper nose and a few RES. What is amazing to me is I have more FHM than I did this summer. Thousands of them on the bank in the grass and big bait balls full of them. Do they spawn in the winter too?

I put 135 largemouth in september 1, I have yet to see the first one of them. I would have thought that many bass would have worked the minnows over better. Not to mention 300 CNBG and 400 RES in there. I was thinking of going back to feeding everyday March 1 I quit feeding when it got cold here in November. Would March 1 be about right?

The feeding isn't calendar day dependent, it's more water temp dependent. Get yourself a cheap wired indoor/outdoor thermometer or a cheap swimming pool thermometer. Try a handful of feed when water temp is 50-55, if nothing shows up, try again at 55-60 degrees.

A customer will throw feed as soon as ice leaves his pond and the fish are feeding. He's got HBG and YP along with a few HSB.

We have a 54 acre lake in Monteagle, not far from Langster. We operate 6 Sweeney feeders from April Fool's to Halloween, 7 months. We use 1 ton of feed for our season, 40 each 50 pound bags. We have used Cargill Triton 4512 the last 3 years, very happy with the service, price, product.

I fished this pond last weekend with a float and a jig. I have Coppernose 8 to 9 inches and fat. I got 5-6 inch and fat got 4 inch and fat. They were stocked June 10 last year. My RES were stocked May 1 last year they are 6 to 7 inch and very healthy but I wouldn't call them fat. The bass were stocked September 1 and were 3 to 4 inches. 7 months later they are 6 inches and 7 inches and thin. Pond is full of minnows I put 17lbs in there and they spawned and spawned it is full of minnows, why are the bass not fat and bigger? I am afraid the coppernose will take me over due to small bass size. To me I wish I would have put bass in sooner, what did I do wrong? Or am I not being patient? I caught 75 coppernose 16 bass and 12 RES when I fished it.

How much cover is in there for the bass to hide in and ambush the fish that swim by? What type of "minnow" did you stock?

Fat head minnows and they are plenty in there, and coppernose offspring. Plenty of cover water is up, got grass now, and several pallets in pond with concrete blocks and some pipe and a nice brush pile. Why are the bream growing ( yes I feed everyday) and the bass look like I got them out of a creek? Now they are pounding minnows in the evening now, did not see any for 6 months, maybe it is weather but they got plenty to eat. Growing 3 to 4 inches in 7 months has disappointed me. I was hoping for 8 to 9 inch and thicker

It is how thin they are that concerns me. I wanted 6 to 8 inch bass but I did not want to pay 6 dollars a bass.

If there isn't enough cover in the pond for the LMB to hide in and ambush their prey, they will miss a lot of attacks. Like you trying to sneak up on a whitetail in a picked rice or corn field with a bow. Ain't gonna happen easily. The bass need cover in there to ambush their prey from. Think of tree tops, etc. that have holes in the cover that are 12" dia to 24+" dia for them to loaf in and dart out of to get their prey. With minimal cover they are like marathon runners - eating a lot of calories but burning most of them off swimming around. In your pond you want about 1/4 acre minimum of cover for the fish. Do you have that of the correct sized cover? Don't stock any more minnows, let the bass eat them and start working on the baby bluegills.

What is your water clarity? Sometimes if turbidity is high this can hinder a predator's ability to see and eat lots of small fish. Also your bass were stocked in September. For TN I don't think you will see as much growth during Oct to April compared to May to Sept. Getting 3"-4" of growth from small LMB during a TN winter is pretty good IMO.

It was very clear, in september thru Jan. We gotten a lot of rain Feb and March. Water has good color but has not been muddy much. I think I have plenty of cover, and water has been way up all spring. I get the 3 to 4 inch growth but how thin they are is what bothers me. They look like they are starving very thin but it is what it is hope they get fatter, plenty of food for them.

Thank you all again

After dealing with fish for ponds and LMB for around 40 years, these are some of my experiences. You said "The bass were stocked September 1 and were 3 to 4 inches. 7 months later they are 6 inches and 7 inches and thin." Also you said "I am only stocking bass to control Bream."
1. Since your goal is to have LMB as bream control and help produce big bream, I would not be too concerned that they are not real fat at this point in time. Your bass are a tool for sunfish control so ideally you want them lean and mean to consume lots of small BG. The more they eat small BG the better and bigger your bream will become. The larger the bass get the more they will focus on eating larger bream. IMO you want mostly 1"-3" BG getting the heaviest predation which means most of these bream sizes are preyed on heavily by 9"-12" bass. Bigger 15"-17" bass prefer to eat 3.2" to 4.5" BG. Remember that guideline for predation pressure for the size groups of your bream population.

2. I think you ideally do not really want lots of FHM to be present. These FHM will detract from the new young LMB growing and eating this spring's bream new offspring. IMO you do not want the LMB to be eating mostly the abundant FHM and not prey heavily of the new bream hatchlings that will soon be present. I am not sure that I would have initially stocked any FHM with your stated pond goals. You want lean mean hungry small bass to heavily prey on bream late stage fry and small fingerlings to large fingerlings.

3. Years of dealing with many fish farms taught me a lot about how they operate and sell fish. Some are definitely better than others!. Not all are alike. IMO the 3" - 4" LMB that you bought in a TN September were IMO one option of a good bass to buy for your goals. A. 3"-4" LMB in September were either mostly males; males tend to grow a little slower than the females. Males also stay somewhat smaller than female bass. B. A sorted and graded size of bass, or C. a first year class mixture of fish that had been over crowded as fingerlings each not getting ample food. Well fed LMB fry by September should be 5-7" long. See later.

IMO these 3"-4" LMB were good for your stated goals of good control of bream offspring.

Fact Lesson - each hatched year class of bass has a large range of growth potential IF all these fish get all the good foods they can consume. A large Spring hatch of bass grown in a well fed pond will genetically and normally have some slow growers (2"-3") and some very fast growers 7"-9" some maybe 10" and the bulk of the hatchlings will be in the middle sizes of 4"-6" ALL at 5 months old in climate of TN. Most producer fish farms will then sort or grade these bass into $ size groups. Your ""fish guy"" probably bought this size class of fingerling bass from a large producer, or maybe but less likely, he grew them himself. Crowd all the hatchlings together in limited space with limited foods and most all will be the 2"-4" sizes at 5-12 months old. A low percentage of the more aggressive ones aka "jumpers" could easily be 8"-10 long".

No problem with bass growth now, they are really growing females are 10 inches or better and males smaller but they are really healthy now and very aggressive. I caught my first 2 hybrid speckle belly this week. Got to be the best looking bream I have ever seen and growing nicely. Stocked 2 inchers in Febuary and they are 4 to 5 inch already. But nothing grows like CNBG, if you feed them every day good food. I got 10 inch fish already and wider than your hand in one year!


Thank you guys for all the help on this forum. Hooking up my aerator at my new 3/8 acre pond saturday. Very excited! It just got delivered Pro Lake 1.1 1/2 motor with 9 inch Duraplate diffuser 1/2 motor with built in timer.

The only thing that I would have done different is stocked minnows redear and speckle belly first wait. Then add the bass when I added the coppernose. They grow great but they sure spawn alot already having to cull lots of small ones. CNBG need a predator quicker than I did it. But it is all good!

All sounds great to me!

Especially the good looking hybrid speckle-bellies.