Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose New 1.5 Ac pond in NC. YP for harvest is my goal.

You are so right! I have all the above from fish truck fish….. before I got on pond boss and didn’t know better

I still have not gotten a quote back after i told them how many minnows i was looking for, so you might be right on the money. The only place i could find that had any minnows besides FHM and GSH, was Jonah's aquarium. They had quite an extensive list, but they deal mostly in small quantities. I had to request a quote for a bulk order. I did a lookup on Fishmap for my area, and i was able to find the spotfin shinner, not the satin fin. Maybe they do have them mixed up. The place i am ordering the Vallisneria Corkscrew (Vallisneria americana var. biwaensis also carries the Dwar sagitaria, so i think i will give both of them a good try. I will let you know how it works out. I assume i want a nice size bed of each, not mixed together correct?

Summer update. I have some good news and bad news on the pond. I planted the Vallisneria and Sagitaria this spring. It looks like all the Sagitaria died. I think it may have been to early to plant it. The Vallisneria has taken off nicely and is growing some nice dense patches. I will try again with the Sagitaria this summer. I was able to get blunt nose minnows and Spotfin Shiners from Joanahs aquarium, It cost a fortune, but it was the only source i could find. From what i can see they have already been reproducing. The BAD news. Somehow, somewhere to two types of fish I DID NOT WANT ended up in the pond. I have blue gill and what I am almost positive is young large mouth bass. I have caught a few blue gills out of there, but I cant get the bass to bite. It is a very long slender fish with a black line running horizontal down the side. They are about 4 inches long right now. So here lies my dilemma, and I am open to any feedback. I was planning on waiting a full year for the pond to get nice and full of baitfish, before i introduced the perch. Since i already have the BG and LMB, should i go ahead and get the YP in there this summer and get them competing with the BG and LMB? Should i try to get out as many LMB and BG as possible? I will still planning to do grass shrimp and softshell crayfish, but those efforts are probably thwarted with what is in there now. I am open to any ideas.

Plants - The Vallisneria's growth is encouraging. Sagittaria may have been planted too deep in the sediment. I always recommend to plant some of the shipment in shallow tubs placed in shallow water to get it started - then later transplant.

Fish - Small fish as you described do appear to be LMB. Introduction was either from water in-flowage from the mountain stream or your friends decided to do you a favor and stock a few adults that reproduced to produce small bass. Since the pond is fed by a mountain stream - if you are lucky the fish with lateral body stripe might not be LMB??? Only catching one will verify it. Them not biting on a worm baited hook MAY suggest they are not LMB? Any sort of tiny stream entering a pond always has some fish species even as fish fry in it. Your pond also very likely has other fish species introduced from the feeder stream. Baited minnow traps may help determine what species are present.

As LMB start reproducing they will ruin the very vulnerable minnow populations due to too intense predation. Practically all minnow species soon become extinct with the predation pressure of abundant wolf hungry young LMB. In this situation You can't remove significant numbers of LMB predators because this allows BG to overpopulate. You now have a sad state of affairs considering you wanted a YP-SMB fishery. Diligent sampling and determining what species that were introduced by the stream should help with your management as you move forward.

Are you positive the sunfish fish are BG and not green sunfish? GSF always invade from tiny streams and rivulets. Almost every small stream in eastern US has GSF. It is possible that the invading small fish are some other sunfish species. Catching or trapping some will verify species ID.

IMO you are stuck with a BG-LMB dominated pond. At this point you can add some YP (4"-6") that will populate for several years until the initial stockers die of old age. By then the LMB will have become very dominate to where they have essentially eaten all the young YP to where no offspring survive to reproduce. YP due to slender shape and behavior are much preferred as prey for LMB compared to BG. Only dense cover will allow a few YP to survive to be breeding adults. Problem with this is the dense cover also then allows BG to overpopulate and skew the fishery toward BG dominance. YP reproduce once a year and BG reproduce throughout the summer. The YP, if any are able to survive, will be the rare bonus fish after 5-7 yrs. The first several years things will be good for YP but gradually the population declines.

Good luck in moving forward with the pond. In this thread I would like to hear updates as to the pond's progress and development.

That is what i was afraid of. If i didn't already spend so much on minnows i would be tempted to drain the whole thing and start again.... but then again the same thing could happen. The feeder creek is extremely shallow and fast moving, so the BG and LMB in it seem unlikely. It is made from mountain springs, so it is also very cold. It is 20 foot wide but you can walk across in most spots and not get your ankles wet. I have seen small minnows in the deeper holes but never any sizeable fish. We do get geese and cranes in the pond, i wonder if they could transplant some. Here is a photo of the blue gill, i don't think it is a GSF. Also, a mystery minnow i spotted a few weeks ago and have not seen since. It was almost translucent with a pinkish stripe. Wondering if it is a rainbow. I will try to catch one of the LMB on a lure since it won't take a worm or nightcrawler. I have a minnow trap, i will get that in the water and see what i can get.

Pictures won't load for me, but man that would be sweet to have some wild rainbows washing into the pond.

I will try to upload the photos again. I was able to use a cast net and catch one of the bass. I am going to try to buy some perch and get them in the pond ASAP. I am going to try and catch as many of BG and LMB as i can. Does anyone think Electro fishing would be an option to try to get as many out as possible? Or is it a lost cause?

Well, you have LMB and that looks like a regular bluegill to me.

Electroshock survey will allow you to remove some LMB and bluegill, buy truly, you won't get them all. Cost of said survey is a few thousand gold smoullions.

If the LMB and BG came in from the stream, it's going to happen again and again.

If you still want the YP harvesting goal, then I'd be removing all LMB caught. I'm not sure about if the bluegill will be beneficial or not. I"m sure YP will eat some baby BG, but after the BG get a certain size, they'll survive.

Your LMB & BG are adults and way, way too big to have been grown in your pond from fingerlings because the pond was completed and filled in Dec 2022.. Your feeder spring/stream to me sounds to be too small and shallow to have produced those LMB-BG. I suspect someone stocked those fish for you. Since it is now July there is almost a 100% chance reproduction of both has occurred if you have at least one pair of LMB and BG. Thus the pond is now infected with lots of small LMB - BG after spawning with little benefit to catching out the original mistake fish. It will be difficult to manage this mainly as a YP pond. However you can still have YP as a bonus fish. Often when I get a pond with just LMB and the owner wants YP they can just try to remove all the LMB they can catch and the YP population does really well. The problem in your case is you strongly need numerous LMB to control prolific BG so they do not overpopulate and stunt.

Once you verify that spawning of LMB and BG has occurred and you still want numerous nice size YP, I would remove every LMB larger than 9"-10". This skews the bass population to toward high numbers of small bass eating basically small fish of both BG & YP. IMO the bass will prefer YP to BG because YP are easier to swallow whole compared to BG. Thus for a better YP pond you will have to focus your management efforts on manually removing small BG using traps and a seine that is preferably 50 - 100ft long. Look into using Z traps and clover leaf traps - homemade or purchased - YouTube. If diligent in annually removing BG,, the pond should produce some decent sized YP. However you might have to stock several 5"-7" YP so they are not bass food to keep the YP population large enough to frequently catch 10"-12" YP. If you buy YP I would always try to buy YP that are pellet trained as it is a good investment because they grow pretty fast when you feed them.
IMO this is a good place to get minnow seines.
https://douglasnets.net/product-category/minnow-seines/


I think the minnow in the picture is a dace. Common to cool water streams. Very doubtful it will reproduce in the pond - stream yes, pond very unlikely
We are very interested in the progress of your pond. Please keep us updated about your pond management efforts and success.

It is possible that the BG that were introduced may not have been very many. If you are lucky the few BG were all males so you will not get any BG reproduction. The BG in your picture looked IMO to be a male. That is a big plus because it will be a lot easier management to get a good YP fishery if no BG are present. In that case just do as Sunil mentioned harvest every LMB caught. Just a few LMB can do a lot to control a YP population. Keep us updated.