Pond Boss Forums INTRO New Forum Member Introduction New member / pond owner

Hello to all of you! Have a few questions on the new pond we have built.

A little info on the pond: It's approx 1.5 acres with an average depth of 6-7'. Located in NE Kansas. Deepest available depth of 12'. We have installed (2) 20 x 20 and (2) 10 x 10 spawning zones for the BG. Pond is primarily clay bottom with some large rock outcroppings, 30ish concrete blocks with pvc tube, a hump covered with riprap, 90% riprap shoreline and a few ledge drop-offs or cut ledges from 4-6' of water. We are still working on some pvc tree type structures and possibly a little pvc eel grass addition in a couple of the 4-6' depth ranges.

Our goals for the pond are 100% based on fishing/wildlife and lean more to quality LMB (F1's if we can get them). Not sure if we will see double digit fish here or not but would love to see some 7-9 lbs range.

Have read several of the forum posts here and I'm trying to sort out a couple of bits of info. Pond was just finished late fall and will be fed 100% by watershed. There are no upstream ponds. First stocking in spring would be FHM, BG, and Redear. Planning to have a bit of brood stock on the BG and Redear if they are available to jump start the spawning.

I could use some help on GS vs YP. Both of these fish seem to have some predatory and prey characteristics. I like the idea of potential harvest of YP for eating. I think the YP also offer an easier profile to swallow vs adult BG/Redear. Anybody experience with YP vs GS as a supplemental or additional forage base?

A few pics of the project attached for your viewing.

Thanks in advance...

Welcome to Pond Boss!!

Your pond looks great!

When you say "GS," are you meaning Golden Shiner or Green Sunfish? For Golden Shiners, I think we use "GSH."

Golden Shiner.....GSH. Don't want any of the Green Sunfish. Apologies for the booboo

OK, thanks.

Golden Shiners and Yellow Perch are not really filling the same niche.

My recent experiences with GSH would have me stocking them after predators were already established. But others may opt for GSH sooner.

Have you considered SMB? You could have an excellent SMB/YP/RES thing going.

I thought about SMB for a bit. Seemed as though everywhere I looked the KISS method was employed relating to stocking. Smallies are no doubt a fun fish to catch. Not familiar with RES? That is Redear?

I was leaning to the LMB/BG/Redear with a possible GSH (for forage) or YP (for forage + eaters).

I've read that the GSH are egg pirates and the YP eat minnows/young of the year. Adding either of them would add an additional predator to the pond which I want to be careful of. I guess if I had the choice at this point I would opt for the YP between these two as the YP adds some extra food for us too.

Welcome Boondoogle!

I love the stone in your pond. I am jealous because I am too far west in Kansas to have any local limestone quarries.

Yes YP are delicious for humans to eat, AND easier for LMB to swallow. However, they are difficult to use as a long-term forage species in a pond for trophy LMB. They just are not prolific enough, and the BG will eat the fry and small YP, the small bass will eat the medium YP, and the large LMB will eat the largest YP. Eventually you may not have enough brood stock remaining.

Almost every single pond for trophy LMB that I have heard of uses BG as the backbone of the food supply. They are just so prolific and the wider-shaped BG can escape some of the smaller bass, so you eventually have a food source that can grow large enough to feed your 7-9# bass!

When I started reading PB, I thought you could just design your perfect fish population and manage your pond based on your goals - and just keep your pond at that optimal point. Instead, even our most expert managers are constantly tweaking their ponds and frequently settling for what the pond will actually give them. Your pond will never be constant, and your fish population will always be a moving target.

That being said, perhaps you could start out with FHM and YP (and perhaps RES). Get those started this spring and give the YP a year head start, and then do BG in Year 2 and LMB in Year 3. That way you might have an awesome YP fishery for a few years. Your LMB population, while introduced late, would probably show phenomenal growth. Might reach your trophy goals that way?

You are also right about the GSH showing traits of both predator and prey. Their predator part might allow GSH to interfere with some management plans for certain top predator species. However, many of the Pond Boss people with LARGE bass also have GSH in their ponds. Having a large forage species in addition to the BG seems to be a benefit. (Once your LMB population is well-established, most of the GSH people say you have to have some heavy plant cover in at least a few places in the pond to keep a reproducing GSH population.)

Are you considering a supplemental feeder for your big bass goals? Feeding pellets directly to the bass is a big growth enhancer. Or, feeding pellets to your BG is an indirect growth enhancer to your bass.

Finally, with your rip rap shorelines and stone cover in shallow water, have you considered adding any crayfish? In my experience fishing rocky lakes in eastern Kansas, there are times in the spring where every bass we caught had crayfish feelers sticking up out of their craws. The crayfish will not feed your biggest bass, but the small and medium bass will grow quickly on that "extra" forage if you can get a good population established in your pond.

I am just throwing out some non-expert ideas while you are still in the planning stages. Hopefully some of our actual experts will drop into your thread.

Good luck developing your new pond. It looks like it is going to be a beauty AND an awesome fishery!

i was out at the pond yesterday after our first snow. I don't think there is a problem here but curious as to what would cause the camo pattern on the water we have in the pond currently. The water is approx 1-2' deep here. There are a couple of pools in the pond that are filling and have this same look. It's been about a week or so since our last rain so the pond water is still a nice chocolate milk color overall.

I'm thinking that as the pond fills more we may not see this as much.

On the crayfish absolutely will be an add. There's a creek 1/4 mile downstream of us that I will likely trap from and they will be the first stocking to the pond this spring (if we can get a little depth of 3-4'). Supplemental stocking of crayfish should be easy to work through should there be a need as the pond is fully stocked and matures.

On the feeding we will be using 1 bank mounted feeder. Likely the Texas Hunter I've seen and read so much about. It's a little tough to see in the pic but from the peninsula there is a slightly deeper pool on the other side of the cut in trench in the attached pics. We'll be feeding off the left side of the peninsula (West).

Aeration will be added at some point as well. I'm thinking this will come in before we complete the final stocking of the pond.

RES = Redear Sunfish

Cool build! I'll be following along closely!

Reading between the lines a little on this. Is the SMB/YP/RES or LMB/GB/RES a mouth size type limit?

SMB/YP used because the SMB can eat the juvenile YP but their mouth size leaves the adult YP for future spawning?

Similarly, LMB/BG as some point the mature BG become more than only the monster LMB can take out?


On YP spawns it looks like the ribbons of eggs contain around 100,000 eggs.

On BG spawns there are multiple through the spring and summer to keep recruitment in the pond.

Assuming that larger mature fish spawn more than first year sexually mature.

Boondog, for the first three lines of your last post, in general, yes, that's the conventional wisdom.

I'm not sure about how many YP eggs per ribbon.

And yes, BG tend to spawn a few times over the summer which helps the forage base.

https://southcenters.osu.edu/sites/...ments/abc/YellowPerchSchoolFactsheet.pdf

Looks like first search had the wrong info on YP egg ribbons. Ohio State says 10-40,000.

Hello.

Thanks for the site.