Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose New 2 acre pond stocking plan

Herons will destroy a pond and eat your fish, I have had them kill bass and not even eat them just kill them. Destructive birds and they sure are not endangered like vultures they are way to many of them. .17 hmr works nice and quite

Seen a few fish like this. It's not a sore or a wound. It's a blob of slime with sediment in it. Any ideas? Cold water fungus?

Generally, that indicates some kind of stress on the fish. Causes of stress can be all kinds of things like poor water quality, overcrowding, etc.

It doesn't hurt to throw a few boxes of kosher salt into the pond as a mild boost to fish health.

New fish as of 2 weeks, and water is below 50. Would be my guess as to the reason for stress. But only seen a few fish like this. Water temps are increasing. So, hopefully that helps.

Saprolegnia or other fungus form. Pretty typical in stressed fish, BG very often at 50 degs.
One thing I notice right away is the size of eye on BG, it's very large indicating slow growth/lack of food. (before you got them).

Interesting! Is that something that will go away with proper food?

Once a fish has missed growth opportunity, it will never reach true growth potential. It can still grow once food is available, but not to the sizes it would have if proper forage was available from day 1.

bstone,

Don't worry too much about lost potential and focus your energy on other things. The biggest loss is the length increment of the age. Hatchery fingerlings in the 1-3 sizes are often low RW and even shorter than they would have otherwise been if stocked in a fresh farm pond at 2 months of age. In a hatchery pond, within 45 to 60 days the growth of the new hatch slows dramatically. They are between 1" and 2" at that time. Most people want to buy 1"-3" fingerlings for stocking so they don't try to grow them fast but rather maintain them so they grow slowly. This is the way of industry by and large. Purchasing last years crop for stocking in March kind of ensures you will be buying fish with lost potential.

Buying fish when hatcheries have new crop at 1"-2" in the field will not guarantee that you will get new crop fingerlings. I wish I could say it would. So you will just work with what you have. There is a lot of years ahead of them and so how you take care of them from here will determine their growth path from here. You can still grow them remarkably. Your stocking plan suggests an emphasis for LMB. This is probably where you need to be focused on getting very good fingerlings (young and long). I say young and long because there is going to be a lot of forage in your pond that is too big for new crop 2" LMB to eat. Some of the BG could eat them. So if buying advanced fingerlings there is room for older fingerlings to work their way into your order. As much as possible, you want length that is appropriate for the age of the fingerling.

No reason to buy hatch at 1-2".
i pull my fry and stock out in 3 days post-hatch in heavily fertilized ponds to maximize growth rates. At day 35 I pull and put in feed training tanks. The top fish achieve near twice the growth of the other half and after feed training, these go back outside in grow outs full of forage AND supplemental feeding.
I won't sell 2-3" fish to stock, doesn't make sense and is BAD business.
My fish at 2-3" are FAR from low RW, in fact they are absolute pigs and again, long, skinny fish are not healthy, they have missed something from day 1 and I'm not sure where you get this notion.
I've tried and tried to keep an open mind here, but I'm about to just quit posting because this is not good advice given above and apparently my personal experience is just crap.
Done for now..

Snipe,

I have no doubts that your fish are of the highest quality that have exhibit good growth and RW. But the fact remains that you are different from most supplier in that you focus on doing just that. But most don't. The problem is that you can't supply everyone. I wish that you could. A lot of folks are going to get less than optimum fingerlings. I didn't like the condition of the fingerlings either ,... AND ... I don't understand why the seller wouldn't tell him to wait until temps were warmer to stock them.

As factual as your comments were, there is nothing he can do about other than take care of what he has. No fish reaches it potential. Ketona Lake, which produced the world record, to fish >4 lbs and numerous >2 lbs without feeding, contained ordinary bluegill. At least according to the Alabama Wildlife folks. They could not get them to grow better than their own selected strains when tested in farm ponds. They had the potential for the pinnacle of greatness, but only in Ketona Lake.

I just don't want the OP to feel discouraged. In the end, he will have a great pond where the fish reach the potentials the environment of his pond (and his management) will allow. What will determine this mostly will be populations and available foods.

I often remind myself to not stick one of my southern toes too deep in northern pond water when a regional expert is available.

Especially where stocking BG is concerned. BG up north and in the south have different recommended stocking structures and outcomes.

I'm still have issues with getting bluegill and the redear to eat the pellets. I feed once per day for 1 second at 1930 at two feeders on either ends of the pond. I get a few BG and RE, but mainly FHM. Nothing like the 4000 BG and 1000 RE I put in the pond a few months ago. But, I did catch a BG on the overflow and he was big and fat! I decided to try and catch a few fish, I quickly caught a BG and he was also big and fat. My guess is that I have alot, and I mean alot of small FHM in the pond from the 100 lbs I added last year. They must be getting their fill of small FHM is my guess.

That's great news B! Did you seem to have much loss from the fish after stocking or did the infections seem to clear up?

What food are you pushing through the feeder?

Are you using a feeding ring with the feeders?

I scanned back to one of your previous posts and it looks like you were going to start off with Optimal #3 and then switch to Optimal #4. Here's some info on the starters from the Optimal website...

With a gradual sinking pellet, the entire water column can be targeted, enabling the weaker fish to get the appropriate nutrients they need and increasing survivability across the population.

If you are still using the Starter #? from Optimal your fish may be eating it below the surface. Switching to a floating JR or BG will likely bring them to the surface.

Out of the 4000 BG and 1000 RE I only found maybe 15 - 20 dead fish since the day they were added to the pond. They all have seemed to survive the infection. Have not seen any with the white spots.

I am feeding Optimal, Mark has been great giving me suggestions on feeding. I have #3, #4, Jr, and GB sizes. I bought an entire pallet due to the cost savings.

I have not tried the feeding ring yet, so many other projects are taking up my time. Staining the dock, getting the contractor to do a final grade so I can get seed down. And trying to finish up my shooting range.

I am still using up the #3, and #4. The #4 sinks, and I see GB below the water zipping around after them. I just recently started to add some Jr to the mix.

I had a couple of posts recommending the use of a feeding ring before I got mine in. About a week or two after getting it in I did see some changes in how the fish related to the area we feed from. TH feeders have a great throw pattern and our pond is subject to wind which in turn blows the food whichever direction the wind happens to blow that day.

What we started to see after putting the feeding ring out there was that the fish seem to be holding in area during the day when we aren't feeding. If I am on site and throw some in by hand at the ring....they snatch it right up. I would never have guessed that a 3/4" pvc tube head in place by a couple of bricks on a string would have made such an impact.

Next step for us will be to feed mid-day for sec or two to see if we can get them to take it on a regular basis.

For us, absolutely worth the 30mins to make the ring and set it as we are feeding only floating food at this point. Sinking food probably wouldn't have the same drift problem we experience. Wife even complimented me on the "good idea" which I responded with 100% cudos to the guys on the forum.

Good to hear you didn't have much loss on the fish. Sounds like you are well on your way to being ready for the LMB and HSB that you wanted to put in.

I've never tried to use a feed ring, so no input there.

I have observed that heavily feed trained adult Bluegill actually came off of feed when transplanted into a new body of water that was polluted with fathead minnows of all sizes. I had moved (85) of these Bluegill over, and they were almost off of feed 100% to the point where you didn't see the fish anymore, and we thought we had a total fish kill. They were in there though.

Interesting! I will give it a try, as you said its easy to make...

Good input, sounds like the FHM are what are feeding my BG and RE.

Back in Late Summer of 2023 I added:
100 lbs Fathead Minnows
100 lbs Golden Shiners

And then stocked in mid March 2024:
3000 Bluegill 2"- 3"
1000 Bluegill 3"- 4"
1000 Redear 2"- 3"

I have been feeding 2x a day on two separate feeders with Optimal Fish Food.
Today I decided to go fishing to see how the BG and RE are doing after 3-1/2 months.
Very pleased with what I caught, all big fat and healthy!
And millions of FHM...

I think picture is a BG?

Yes those are Bluegill. The 2nd pic seems that the fish might have a mark on it's back from a Great Blue Heron. First fish might have a grub right in front of it's tail, but it's hard to tell from that first picture.

What are the general opinions on snapping tuetles? I have two medium size snapping tuetles. I have read they really are not a problem, will not eat healthy fish. Will eat sick/dead fish and fish eggs? Thxs

Lusk once said that anytime a turtle catches a fish; the fish deserved it.