Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose A second fish to add to my trout pond

The past few years with its hot summers have made it difficult to maintain a trout pond. I am looking for a second fish to stock in my previously trout only pond. The pond will be fished by my two grandsons aged 3 and 6 years old. The pond is located on our country property that is about 1 1/2 hour from home so we will not be there that often. but when there I want to be sure that the grandchildren will catch fish regardless of temperature or weather conditions. I am willing to stock the pond annually to maintain a healthy population of fish but do not want to have to continuously cull the fish to maintain a healthy population of baitfish
Our pond is about one acre and 15' deep, last year we added a well to attempt to help our trout survive the summer heat. The well water goes through a venturi and water tower consisting of five 5-gallon buckets, it then is piped to the bottom of the pond. The pond shoreline consists of about 1/3 willow branches and roots and 2/3 grasses. About 15 years ago, I mistakenly stocked Black Crappie, within 1 year they had eliminated all of my fatheads and were putting a dent in my spawning crawfish, then after attempting to cull them for five years, gave up and drained the pond, to remove. I don't want to make the same mistake again. I have a feeder that is set to distribute food one time per day. Perch sound like a good alternative but I would like to get the Pond Boss members ideas before proceeding.

Welcome to Pond Boss!!!

Yellow Perch are a nice fish, but they do need some kind of forage base to thrive.

Would hybrid bluegill live in your area?

Liquidsquid lives not too far from you and has been doing this for a number of years - check his posts or maybe message him.

I live in the Fingerlakes and just got started a couple years ago but one mix people in the north try is Pumpkinseed (PS), Yellow Perch, Smallmouth Bass with a minnow base (golden shiners and fatheads or rosy reds) along with paper shell crayfish. That is what I have in a 1.25acre pond but don't have enough years under my belt to say that this works. My kids loved catching PS off docks, too easy, and supposedly PS don't overpopulate as bad as BG and they don't bite as much (never been bit swimming in PS infested waters). You could add just PS but Bill Cody might know if that will work.

Problem is finding anything other than YP, BG and LMB in local hatcheries. You can call SmithCreek and see if they are planning to get any of these in and may have to go to PA.

I haven 't been able to find anything about hybrid bluegill in my area, I will try to look into them.

My forage base presently consists of Fatheads along with a good collection of Crayfish.

Do you have a pellet feeder for your trout?

One option is to fatten up the trout that learn to readily take pellets. I am not a "trout guy", but there are a couple of people on the forum that do that in their "trout only" ponds. The kids can then catch the trout at the size you select. They should be able to catch most of them from the pond. You can then re-stock trout at that point, or you could have "ladder stocked" a few trout every year. (That typically costs more unless you can buy trout in small batches. You also have the chance of catching smaller trout and causing a hook mortality, or making them hook shy.)

Another good option (as the wise locals posting above have suggested) is to add a type of panfish. That is what I usually target with young, new anglers. Do NOT add normal BG. They would quickly take over your pond, since even the largest trout would not make a dent in their numbers. I have read some of the pumpkinseed threads from our members in the NE U.S., and they sound like an excellent candidate.

If you can't find any to purchase, perhaps you can bucket stock a few to get started. I am sure 3 and 6 y.o. kids would be perfect for helping you perform that project if you had some decent fishing areas for PS. Do you have any local fishing buddies you can ask?

Another option is to add another species of fish that will not reproduce in your pond. Hybrid striped bass might be a good option? With enough forage, they will get large quickly. Walleye will not grow as quickly, but are very tasty if your family eats their catch. (I love trout, yet I think walleye is even better!)

Another way to introduce fish that will not reproduce is to have a single-sex pond. If you could catch yellow perch, or smallmouth bass during the spawn, and CORRECTLY sex them, then that is another option. (That may be an expert-only option?)

Finally, I like that you bit the bullet on the black crappie "mistake". Is it relatively easy for you to drain your pond to start over and then have it quickly fill over the course of a single spring? If so, that is a huge advantage for you! IMO, you can then experiment on whatever good advice you get. If the pond gets messed up, once you have fished out your expensive trout, just drain it and cull 100% of the fish and start over.

No matter how you go, I would like to see another forage species. FHM are tasty, but slow. Therefore, they are great to start a pond, but they can be completely eliminated by the predator fish in some ponds. I don't know how close you are to Smith Creek Fish Farm, but they do normally carry Golden Shiners. (Even if you are not close, that suggests they are a viable forage species for W. NY.)

I also see that Fish Haven Farms (east of the Finger Lakes) does carry hybrid BG, which suggests they are probably viable for your latitude.

Good luck on further enhancing your fishery. I love watching projects designed to put more fish on the lines of young anglers!

Fish Haven Farm in Candor, NY shows that they should have hybrid bluegill in August. It is probably a bit of a drive but you could give them a call. ​607-659-3474 (FISH)

Thanks FishinRod, I have a timed feeder on a float. that distributes food every morning.

Goals - ""I want to be sure that the grandchildren will catch fish regardless of temperature or weather conditions.""
Let's get some more basic information.
Questions -
Are trout still living surviving all year in the pond?
Can someone catch them (trout) in July & August?
Does the pond still have fatheads living year round?
What brand and 40% protein content of fish food are you using?

IMO get rid of those willow trees. The roots will perforate the pond banks and transpire lots of water out of the pond. The willow will also add lots of unnecessary leaves and twigs into the pond to make it age faster and make more mucky black shoreline conditions. I have a local pond owner with this problem. He is tired of the problems and added work that the willow trash is causing. He deeply regrets allowing those willow trees to grow near and on the pond edges. .

Not with trout as a predator.

Response to Bill's questions
1) Are trout still living all year in the pond? Answer- after this summer not sure, until the past string of hot summers, we could always lay a worm on the bottom any time of the year and catch trout. We enjoyed catching five pound plus fish through the ice. We stock fish annually in October.
2) We have fatheads living year-round in the pond.
3) Presently, I am using Optimal salmon feed, 48% protein, 20% fat with Krill.

Before stocking another fish species wait until late fall to determine the status of the trout. I would not put any panfish in the trout pond until you know if trout survived or died. Trout may not be biting due to stress from warm surface waters.

If you add other species of fish do you still plan to add some trout each fall?

What I would like to do is add a panfish that does not reproduce or only reproduces enough to keep the pond at a more or less even population. That includes adding or removing enough panfish annually to accomplish that.

If I find out that some trout have survived this summer, then would also like to add 50 to 100 trout each fall. One thing that I like about trout is that you have the ability to control population. Although it has become frustrating as I am only harvesting about 10% of the trout that I stock, the rest just seem to disappear.

Poachers , 2 Legged , or 4 Legged ? How about the infamous Water Turkey, Eagles , Fish Hawks , or Osprey ? Possibly a little of all listed ? Last of all , IIRC , read somewhere that 30 per cent per year natural death was not unusual , If you have a couple of the above, + the 30 percent over a years time, oh don't forget the fish eating duck varieties , and you won't have much left. I've watched Water Turkeys every spring at my pond, its a battle for 2 weeks , constant poaching and I see beautiful fish of 12-14" hanging out of heir beaks , plus 2 days of Bald eagles every spring . Trolling for Trout on Colorado Lakes, the Osprey and Eagles feeding nests , are constantly fishing and quite successful . Just a thought . 2 Legged and four legged mammals , can haul out 30-40 Rainbows in a night or two Easily , especially dumb hatchery trout , just stocked. We stock 200 lbs of Rainbows each November , I ask our customers to wait 7-10 days before they start targeting trout , to let them acclimate. 1 acre isn't much to search through , to find a school of hatchery rainbows.

Ken,

I would be very careful about adding panfish of any kind. They are going to want to overpopulate. Aside from the potential of decimating a minnow population, they will also compete with trout. I would like to share some thoughts. I have given some consideration to having a seasonal trout pond in the south. Such would have abundant populations of small forage to include minnows at the time of stocking each Fall. Here I would expect complete mortality of Trout by May. But some benefits are that forage always can replenish and I just prefer fishing in the cold months. Down here I have given consideration to having a limited summer crop of MOZ TP or perhaps combining with limited CC. For me this would be an attractive option but there is the risk of CC recruitment and a bunch of stunted CC.

Your options will be limited for a fish that doesn't reproduce where numbers can be held in check. I don't know how big your pond is ... but just another thought. Keo Fish Farms in Arkansas has shipped HSB to a few members. The cost each is very affordable and shipping roughly doubles the cost. Seems like they ship when the count is around 400 to the pound where the cost for the HSB is around $80 and the shipping also at least that amount overnight. They have to limit the weight of fingerlings to 1 lb so it depends on the size of the fingerlings when shipped. Don't know if they can ship to NY but you could inquire and if so they will let you know. They will also let you know if you need any permits. So in a hypothetical 1 acre maybe 400 the first year and 800 in subsequent years could maintain a population. There will probably be more mortality of small fingerlings but eventually you should get a balance between stocking, mortality, and harvest. If they were overeating the food chain you could just stop stocking and eventually they would die out. Harvesting could speed up the process. Problems are that the larger HSB would be predators of small trout (if you are stocking them small). So heavy planned harvest of fish >10" and stocking trout of a minimum 8" length may work. Where you would be removing > 10 " HSB they would be very panfish-like and could achieve that length by the end of the second summer. One thing I can tell you is that you would never have to drain the pond and start from scratch to get rid of them. They will not reproduce so as you harvest you would be reducing the population without new ones persistently on the conveyor belt due to spawning.

JPSDAD,


I had considered adding HSB to my pond, however my searches of NY State hatcheries indicated that the sale of HSB in New York was not allowed. Otherwise, I agree HSB would be a perfect alternative to the addition of panfish in my pond. It looks like I may have to limit my pond choices to trout, we usually stock in early October, this gives us 1 1/2 months until the pond is completely frozen. with ice out about mid-March. The trout are usually active until about June 15th giving us about two months of fishing before the pond surface water gets too hot and the trout head for the bottom.

Just an update on the status of my pond. Some of the remaining trout began feeding on floating fish food in September. Just a few at first, with the number increasing thru October. Seeing positive signs that at least some trout had survived, I stocked an additional 100, 4-6" fish Nov 2nd.
It appears that prior to the Nov 2 nd stocking, the trout that I could see feeding on the surface consisted of two age groups. One group presently about 16" stocked as 8–12-inch fish in the fall of 2023 and a second group of larger fish that I would guess to be 18"+ that were stocked in the fall of 2022 also as 8-12"-fish.

Great report!

"If you build it feed them, [they] will come."