Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain recommendations for northern YP/SMB/BT pond

Feeding pellet trained perch high protein pellets will create a dream fishery for you. With the correct predatory pressure and population management you should easily catch one nice sized jumbo perch every 1-3 minutes. When you are catching mostly YP less than 8" long, the pond does not have enough predators eating the 3"-5" YP or you are not manually adequately thinning out enough of the small YP 2"-5" long. A correct number of predators will do this removal of small perch for you. Catching a jumbo perch every 20 minutes means the pond has too many predators eating too many of the young perch.

The forage base is finally getting started. I added 20 pounds of FHM today and have 20 dozen papershell crayfish coming next week. My source for eastern silvery minnows can’t get them until December, so I’ll order extra with the assumption that the YP and SMB that are going in this Fall will get many of them.

For now, it has several thousand tadpoles of variety species of toads and frogs, but predominantly green frogs. They look a lot like a bullfrog but don’t get as big. I’ve considered stocking bullfrog tadpoles, but I think I’ll hold off for now.

There are several species of plants coming in, all of which showed up naturally. One of my next projects will be identifying them.

I’m enjoying the journey.

Since my pond is new, I decided to add some FHM spawning habitat. I got the idea from an old publication from the University of Maine Cooperative Extension called "Baitfish for Fun and Profit in Maine". Our house is being built, so I took some scrap untreated 2x6 and 2x8, laid them out on the patio, laid a piece of plastic string (poly electric fence) over the top and stapled it in place. I put 5 of them in the pond in 4-14" of water with a wooden stake on each end to keep them in place. I suspect they may mimic a lily pad (which I thankfully do not have). I may go down there with a battery operated grinder and wire wheel and rough up the underside so the eggs adhere better.

I haven't seen this particular publication referenced on here before but it has some useful information that is worth sharing. It has chapters on GSH, FHM, white sucker, long nose sucker and rainbow smelt cultivation. Although I have found that links on here often don't work well, here is the web address to where I found it:
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/230047592.pdf

My pond water is still settling out and is therefore more turbid than it will eventually be. Although I have read that FHM are tolerant of turbidity, mine seem particularly attracted to the in flowing water. I suppose it's also possible that I'm seeing more of them there because it's clearer there. I suspect that although they are tolerant of the turbid water, they still probably prefer clearer water.

Besides the runoff from the natural drainage, I discovered a few small springs that were bubbling up. The photo doesn't give perspective unfortunately, but they are about the size of a baseball. Should I try to cap these with compacted clay so they don't become the source of a leak? At full pool, they will be about 6-8' under water. If so, any advice on how to do so? It seems that springs can be a blessing or a curse, and I'm a rookie so I'm not sure how to decide between the two.



Thank you to everyone who has helped me along the way. This is such a great forum with such a wealth of knowledge.

This is just a guess, but if you see 'bubbling,' it may not be a spring; it may just be some air pockets being compressed as the weight of the water squeezes down onto the pond basin, thus causing a slow release of the air or gases.

If you can get a few wood pallets sunk, that will also help with fathead spawning, and it won't be visable from the surface (not that your current floating wood looks bad).

An update on progress:

I stocked about 4,000 FHM in mid Summer and they started spawning almost immediately. That was followed by papershell crayfish and at least one other species of crayfish that showed up naturally (I believe they are virile crayfish, but I haven't definitively ID'd them yet). I have also trapped a few shiners that made their way naturally, although I haven't definitively ID'd what species. Some PK shrimp went in next, followed by 6-7" YP and 5" SMB (see my post on Extended Transport Times).

As a skim of ice was setting in on the pond a couple weeks ago, I finally got a chance to add some ag lime. The recommendations from TAMU suggest 4,000 of lime to bring the alkalinity above 20ppm (my initial water test showed only 4ppm). I was only able to get 1,400 lbs but I figured it was a start, and I'll put the rest in just before Spring.

I have an 11' plastic boat that I built a platform for. I then unloaded 200 lbs of ag lime at a time onto the platform and spread it as equally as I could by hand throwing it with a plastic scoop. It was not as inefficient as I expected it might be, and it was a good shoulder workout. Here is a photo of my low tech, low budget set up. I wouldn't want to do it on a 5+ acre water body, but for my 1.4 acres it worked fine.



My plan for the remaining 3,000 lbs of lime is to spread it on the ice using my little tractor with a 3pt hitch fertilizer spreader that can take 400 lbs at a time. I'll do this towards the end of the winter, just before the ice starts to melt. My hope is that it will settle into the pond basin fairly evenly as the ice thaws.

Soon after that, I'll be out looking for egg ribbons from the YP.

I have a source for Eastern Silvery Minnows and have done a significant amount of reading about them. Typical adult size for them is about 3.5", which seems about perfect for my fishery. Dr. Cody has helped a great deal throughout this entire project including advising on this somewhat obscure forage species that seem to reproduce very readily in a pond environment. They are typically only available in the winter, so I'll be stocking them soon. If all goes perfectly, they will spawn around the same time as the YP, offering my YP a plentiful food source as they develop from fry to adults.

The geothermal went in a couple months ago and is working great to heat the new house so far, costing less than $1/day in electricity to run it ($6/day before my solar array went in).



Thanks again for all of the advice from this community.

That is a lot of good results to pack into a single post!

Glad to hear the geothermal is working well. I definitely will want to pick your brain on the forum if we ever get to the "build a house with an adjacent pond" stage for our property, since geothermal would cover most of our house heating/cooling needs.

Have you seen any SMB or YP since the stocking?

I had one YP not survive the trip, one was found floating about two weeks later, and one more is floating under the ice. The ice is clear and I’ve walked the entire pond a couple times and haven’t seen any more. I saw some SMB swimming in a couple inches of water for about the first week and haven’t seen any since then.Thankfully the GBH had all migrated south by then or they may have been snacks for them. I haven’t found any dead ones. The FHM and tadpoles continue to thrive.

As far as I know, I have under 10% mortality rate for the YP and 0% for the SMB. I’ll consider that a win.

Only sad part is having to wait until spring to see what all's going on in the pond.

Done. B storm's post and replies to his post is at: https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=572156#Post572156