Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose One Year Growth In The New Pond

We took a look at the fish in the new pond. About everything we put in last spring was 3"-4" long besides the minnows and shiners.
We had put FHM and GS the year before as soon as the water had some depth, the minnows really blew up with what looked like milions coming up to the feed last year. Also added some crawdads and hand fed a few days a week all through summer into fall.

The fishing goal in this pond is to have a good smallmouth and perch fishery.
Pretty much everything the boys threw at them they hit quickly, minnows/jigs/little spinners. Almost everything was perch...caught a few walleye.

Perch were all 8"+




Walley were 12"


Crappie are hand size...none of those went back in. Put 25 BC in last spring (in hind sight I wouldn't have) caught 14...eleven to go. Trying to get as many out now as we can before they spawn.


Didn't catch any of the SM, did see some RES under the dock but they didn't bite at all and seemed shy, they looked around 6".

The perch were just nuts biting constantly, saw a lot of schools of different size minnows swimming around the edges and a few little schools of shiners.

Great new pond update for your young fishery.

great work! Those fish look happy (except for the crappie who was facing his/her demise)

Is the pond slow to fill? looks like you are almost there. Can you add water via well?

The pond water looks healthy. Do you aerate?

I love that you are pushing the envelope beyond a BG, LMB, CC pond and it will be great to see how a WE, Perch and SMB mix do.

Thank you.

The pond has been very slow to fill, have let it fill naturally. It's got about 5' to go, we havent had as much rain as usual the past year and a half since it was dug and the pond is so big...little over an acre around 21' at deep end 15' at shallow end so it's a lot of water.

I do have the well in now, just not turned on yet untill I get sink and bathroom all hooked up in barn...should be a couple weeks. We do have a hydrant at the well head, is it feasable to try and top it off with a hose? Still seems like that would be a lot of water to get 5' deep acre size? That it would take weeks or months?

I do not aerate.

Average rate from a garden hose set-up is maybe 7-10 GPM. 5-acre-feet of water is about 1,630,000 gallons. That would be 203,750 minutes of running your hydrant at 8 GPM. Which is 141 continuous days!

I would not add well water unless you go into a deep drought this summer and your water level starts falling significantly, or unless you have a well/pump combination capable of much higher water rates.

Good luck watching your initial fish stocking grow to maturity. Looks like a great start!

That's what I figured is that it would take a long time that way. Even when it has been really dry the pond doesn't seem to go down much at all...again I think because of the size. It has to have millions of gallons of water in it, with some good spring rains it should come up another couple of feet, by next year this time it will be full.

Hi. New member here, just joined 5 minutes ago. Just had a large rain event yesterday and my 1 year old 1 acre pond overflowed and left behind several hundred if not thousand 1”-3” yellow perch in the grass and clover of my spillway. Saw a couple of small golden shiners and shell crackers. I stocked 125 2” small mouth fingerlings in September 2022 along with 300 red ear and 200 3-4” yellow perch. These are obviously the yoy from February of this year. I have yet to even see or catch a smallie. Anyone out there who can share with me a similar experience and what I might learn from this event? At least what I should learn.

Bummer on losing some fish! Hopefully you re-stocked them as fast as you could grab them.

Lesson #1. Did your normal pond outlet get plugged? If the answer is yes, then you need to determine the cause, and fix it before the next frog strangler rain.

If the answer is no, then your outlet is undersized. That is difficult to fix in a filled, stocked pond. I would recommend reading some old threads on installing a siphon outlet system. That can be added to an existing pond and can be sized to handle the flow into your pond.

If your pond is connected to a stream or waterway such that any big rain will cause the water level in your pond to go over the emergency spillway, then you probably need to build a diversion works for the stream to bypass your pond. You can size a pipe through the diversion to only admit a fixed rate of water to enter your pond.

I pick up baby BG/RES/YP every time my pond runs over the spillway.

It's pretty much a normal deal for fish to swim out during high water events.

I don't worry much about it. The birds will clean them up for you.

OK, I talked with the guy that dug my pond just to see if he had any ideas on faster fill or if there was a reason mine seems slow to fill.

He said everyone in our area that has had ponds dug in the last two years of any size has been having same thing...slow fill due to lower rainfall and rain being spread out instead of downpours.
He said only way to make it fill faster is to pump water in , either out of a creek or from well.
So I called the guy that dug my well to see what my outside hydrant pressure was, he said 25+ gpm at the hydrant.

So, I read up on how inefficient running through a garden hose would be because of loss of pressure due to friction in a 1" hose the further it has to go. I needed to go 180' from the hydrant. Sooo... I bought 180' of cheap solid 4"plastic tile and ran it from hydrant down to the beach. I have a 6' drop in that 180' also, I used stainless wire to attach to tile with a straight drop so I wouldn't loose any water out the top at hydrant.

In two and a half days the pond has gone up 4" I count that as a win! Even if it takes a month of 24/7 my pond will be full and I am not worried about the electric bill. It does affect the water pressure in my barn.
I will hopefully be posting a pic of it at full level next month.

The last pond we built took three years to fill.

I like your reasoning, I do the same...if my fish/pond needs water, I give it to them. I also money whipped my initial spring stocking with 3-6 inch Coppernose/Red Ear sunfish last year for spawning purposes. Using a jig with stubby steves, I sampled 1 really nice BG with a copper band about 1/4 - 1/2 inch band across his forehead, beautiful fish.

Dug a new 2 Acre pond last year, April/May 2022 . average depth, 10', deepest area 35' at full pool, full pool is 5' below spillway.
I was asked by spectators "how long to fill it ? " . " 2-5 years , up to God " . Was my reply . June 3rd 2022 , upper pond , 1.7 Acres , rose 7' in one night , plus 1 ft higher than it's spillway ! New pond came up to full pool , and stocked with BG/ GSF for certain . June 5th , Yep, Our Lord decided to show his generosity, another huge Western Oklahoma tstorm, water went over new pond spillway, 8" deep through 3 24 " pipes ! Appeared to be end of that drought , but no, things got bad dry right after those 2 rains . Spotty showers from those rains to last April, then dry , started pumping 3 Wells into upper pond, and pumping from 2 3/4 hp submersible irrigation pumps in upper pond to keep from losing acres of new bermuda around our new RV park , looking bad . Then 2nd week of June , someone or ones on our forum found the correct dance step ,offered the correct prayer , faced towards western Oklahoma and the Lord opened the clouds !!! Maybe, ?? 5 ?? days in last 30 days water hasn't gone over our spillways , irrigation turned off. Got some happy water. PLEASE !!! , whoever , was rain dancing end of May, 1st of June 2023 , please, write down dance step used, direction faced, and most importantly, the Prayer Chanted !!! Thank You . ( I'll be putting call out again for Dance & Chant for W. Ok, Texas Panhandle , in future, I'm sure )

H2O , praying for your big Tstorm , in NW Ohio so you can shut off your electricity sucking water well .

Wish I had found this Forum years ago, I'd have better Fish, better ponds, for less money out, Thank you, everyone. Not only for all the technical info , all the practical experience shared, and especially the humor . I've read now , Aeration, Fly fishing , other species to stock, etc,etc , threads back to 2005 , 18 years of your lives . Seen and read nothing , but caring at the least , Love at the most.
For true Love is to want what is best for another , especially a Brother or Sister you don't even know or met in person.

Thank you again,

Fishing Adventures


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We haven't had a good hard gully washer rain since we dug the new pond. We get an inch to inch and a half slow over a day or two then nothing for a week or month, then an inch every other week. Great for the crops but not for pond filling.
It just happened that I dug this pond during a dryer cycle, buddy dug a nice size pond five years ago and his was rain filled in two months.


Ours is up at least eight inches since I started pumping...I'm pretty tickled about that!