Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Recommendations for northern YP, BG, LMB, CC pond

Hate to jump the thread, haven't found exactly what i'm looking for after hrs. But what about stocking yp,bg,lmb, cc ?? I have new pond we put 1000 fhm in july then sept 2000 fhm,200 shiners, 200 - 1-2" bg, 40 -2" lmb Kids visited Zetts and wanted to put something in. Fhm have reproduced for sure! Would like to stock to fish with kids this year. (Not getting any younger,) 1/2 acre from 2'to 10' deep now ,filled up will reach to 16' depth. Have 2 differs solar powered Any ideas how to accomplish the impossible ??

Understanding that you want to add CC and YP to the existing newly stocked FHM&shiners, BG and LMB. You can do this, however you shouls understand what the fishery will be after 5-8 yrs.
Without going into a lot of detail:

1. Understand that CC do not "clean" the bottom. After they are around 16-17" they become predatory and are equivalent to a similar sized LMB. CC anglers like to use fish (live or dead) for bait. CC eat fish at night while LMB eat fish mostly during the day. One CC realistically takes the place of one LMB. CC can be good esp if you plan to remove them and eat them.

2. If you feed pellets, CC become pellet hogs and grow fast, both good and bad depending on opinion.

3. The FHM minnows will remain usually until the first spawn (recruitment) of LMB grows to 6"-8" and original stockers are 10-13" long. By then the bass will have eaten all the FHM despite how many FHM that you now have present. Unbelievable but true. EACH growing 12 " LMB can eat around 12-16 lbs of small fish per year. Do the math. Just 10 lbs of small fish X 50 LMB = 500 lbs of small fish.
Watch for what happens to the visual minnow density after the first bass spawn. FHM are basically used to jump start a new bass fishery to quickly get good sizes. After that jump start and bass are reproducing, any newly added FHM are only quick snacks which is why BGill are almost always used as the main long term forage food for LMB. Fish farms LOVE to sell FHM as quick snacks each year to pond owners who do not realize what existing LMB do to the new stocker FHM.
Golden shiners in some weedy ponds after 3-5yrs can sometimes maintain a resident low population density of large 7"-8" shiners IF good abundant cover is present. Good abundant cover is not a few X-mas trees. Good cover is 20%-30% of the shoreline with dense cover such as brush, etc. 1 to 4 ft deep. , .
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4. YP will do well with FHM, BG, & LMB (CC) temporarily. Emphasis on temporary. Once the LMB reproduce the first time,,,,, the 10"-12" LMB stockers and all LMB offspring begin eating high percentages of the slender bodied easy to catch young YP to the point after 4-5 years of bass reproducing,,, the LMB and existing larger CC as predators, they consume all or most all YP offspring; thus there will be very few if any new YP in the fishery after 5-7yrs. A 16" LMB can and do eat 6"- 8" YP. One 12"-14" LMB can eat around 350-500 fish per year. Do the math for the number of bass in your pond. The original stocker YP (10"-11") will be about the only YP remaining as the pond ages past 4 yrs. YP will have a life span of around 8 yrs. My studies show YP with LMB are not a good idea together unless lots of weeds or dense habitat (30%-50%) is present to protect young YP. . In a clean pond, LMB tend to eat all skinny body YP reproduction first, then bass will begin eating primarily BG. By then BG could be trending toward over crowding due to the bass for several years eating mostly the easy to catch and swallow YP while allowing BG to reproduce and often become overabundant. Exceptions do occur but rarely.

The only YP-LMB combos that I see successful are ones where every LMB larger than 10" that are caught are harvested. This allows some 6"-8" YP to be present and spawn to produce some new annual crops of young YP.

YP are best stocked with SMB and or hybrid striped bass, both have smaller mouths thus eating smaller YP while the predators have a lot less annual predator reproduction.

ok Thanks for the info Bill That gives me some food for thought. 2 questions arise 1 do most fish naturally take to pellet feeding ? I was thinking about a texas feeder. 2 If I were to stock some yp knowing they'll eventually disappear from the lmb or me. Will bg get out of hand in say 3yrs ?? Guessing this all depends on the numbers and size stocked.

Sorry haven't figured how to totally navigate this forum yet. Did manage to learn for some reason I can find older posts by way of google to here faster. LOTS of info here

1. "do most fish naturally take to pellet feeding ?" I could write a whole article about this.
" for most fish" - My experience usually says no or one gets just casual and not high percentages of aggressive pellet eaters. Numerous factors will determine what and how many fish "take" to eating pellets. IMO a lot of it depends on how well one spends time training to develop pellet eaters. It takes time and due diligence weather training fry/fingerlings or larger fish. Larger fish are a little harder and more tricky to pellet train, although it can be done. Successes are variable.

A.. amount of natural foods present.
The more natural foods that are present the less likely that fish with full bellies will try eating something not natural to them. Hunger is a powerful motivator to try eating unknown items. Some fish like people are more inquisitive and aggressive compared to others of their kind. Most Inquisitive ones will be the first ones to accept unknown items. IMO fish that accept and reject an unknown pellet is mainly because of texture and flavor. A pellet is usually quickly rejected due to its hardness despite it might be flavor enhanced. Most of the natural foods fish eat are fairly soft. My experience shows that softening good quality high protein pellets gets a lot more untrained fish to accepting the pellets. Higher quality pellets have added flavor enhancers and fish meal and oils.

B. the fish species present.
Most panfish species usually are the cherry picker type of feeders. Seeing a motionless, slow moving or sinking items and sucking it in for taste and texture. Whereas predatory fish look for food items that are moving and active. Numerous panfish species will eat snails especially the thinner shelled snails that are fairly easily crushed. Some snail species have thinner shells than other snail species. Fish that are eating snails are sometimes the first ones attempting to eat hard pellets. Thus the type of snail in a pond can can influence how well fish will accept a new type of hard item such as pellets.

C. age of the fish.
The younger the fish is the more likely it will accept an unknown food. Young fish as they grow eat a lot of tiny zooplankton and do a lot of testing of different types of small food items. About all hatchery fish are pellet trained when fish are 1/2"- 2" long by using tiny sinking pellets when these fish are currently eating all sizes of small zooplankton that are sinking or wobbling up and down in the water column.

D. the brand and size of pellets used.
All pelleted fish food brands are definitely not the same. Flavor, amount of fish meal, amount of protein and shape of pellet are I think important influencers of how quickly and how well untrained fish will accept the artificial hard food. Foods for training fry and fingerling fish have very high protein content of around 50%-60% protein, and usually composed primarily of fish meal and flavored oils. When I first started training fish to eat pellets, I bought from one company that made a moist pellet especially for training LMB - the Oregon Moist Pellet – Biodiet now called Bio-Oregon. Another pellet brand now has elongated or cylinder shapes of pellets similar to a short worm/grub or insect body. Feedback has been this brand and shape of pellet helps get finicky fish easier to train to eat pellets. Shape and flavor being important.


Abundance of BG almost always depends on the number of predators, usually LMB, that are present. If it were my pond and wanting a good size (8"-9") BG to be a common panfish, I would make my fish harvest focus to be removing primarily the LMB of 14" and larger. This allows the total weight of bass in the pond to be more numbers of smaller sizes. A pond's biomass capacity of LMB is based on the amount of pounds present not numbers. Five 1 lb bass = one 5 lb bass. It is the smaller sizes of bass than do the best job of controlling the numbers of small BG while allowing the average size of the BG to be trending toward larger sizes. You want lots of smaller bass eating lots of the small BG. This makes the total weight of panfish trending more toward fewer bigger ones who have more food for them to continue growing well. Too many small BG eat too much of the natural foods and not leaving enough for the biggest BG to keep growing. Bigger BG need lots of food to keep growing. If it were mine I would learn how to recognize male and female BG. Then harvest pre-spawn (spring) mostly the females. This reduces the number of females spawning and keeps the surviving smaller male BG growing better and delays them from spawning as quickly until they are larger sizes as they
are better able to compete with biggest spawning males for colony nesting areas.

You can also use fish traps and a 20-40ft seine for the shallow spawning areas to help the bass remove remove what you feel are excess small BG. I make most of my fish traps from 1/2" hardware cloth. See Youtube videos for the Z Fish Trap, Fish Traps and cloverleaf traps.

See Douglas Nets for long minnow seines and
good larger fish box and cylinder traps at
https://ktraps.com/pages/about-our-traps

Thinking this after many sleepless nights. spring stocking 1st some trout for grandkids and I to catch (since they won't last) 2nd also catchable size BG and YP maybe some intermediate size too. Then have a fall stocking of the medium size LMB and CC. Now I'm being asked what about redear? Would it be any advantage to putting them in or will BG and YP young be enough for food base. I'm gonna try hand feeding before invest in a feeder. Problem is I'm not always around like an auto feeder would be.

The RES are more utilized for vector control (eating snails) than a food source for LMB. Mainly because they only spawn once a year where BG spawn much more frequently.

Hand feeding first is a very good idea to first see if you can get some of sort of pellet eating activity. One can go to a fish farm and buy a small amount of pellets and not a whole 40 - 50 lb bag of pellets. IMO it is not the best idea to hold a whole big bag of pellets for a year or more due to some nutrition gradually breaks down over time. Old pellets in humid conditions will become moldy.

Some fish can "learn" by watching other fish eat pellets. monkey see - monkey do type of thing. As I mentioned earlier,,,,, first softening the pellets will get or train more fish to rise to the surface, recognize and then hopefully eat pellets. IMO you don't really need to feed the fish every day. IMO everything a fish eats has some benefit. Benefit can be a minimal snack size amount to over eating and becoming obese. Bottom line the more fish eat,,,, the more they (could) grow. Thus IMO the more pellets they are able to eat the more growth (benefit) that will be realized. If you feed the fish just 2 to 3 times a week the fish will get benefit but they will not receive as much benefit as feeding them every day. If one reduces the number of fish in the pond and feed pellets 2-3 times a week, there will be more benefit to each fish than having no pellet feeding.

Ideally you don't really need to feed pellets to fish to get them to grow better. You can accomplish good fish growth by reducing the number of fish that live in the pond to a point that each one then gets enough of the natural foods produced in the pond for all the remaining fish to grow. Fish body condition can be measured or determined by using relative weight of the fish. Feeding pellets is supplementing the natural foods for the fish to INCREASE total fish production (standing crop) in the pond. Studies have shown that a bluegill needs to eat 2 percent of its body weight per day for maintenance of good health AND then some for growth. When the BG does not get enough to eat this = no growth and maybe losing weight. BG growth is closely related to how much food a fish puts in its belly each day.
It is the manager's job to balance or control the numbers of fish present and the amount of food/s present for the fish so they are then able maintain weight and grow. .

If you want to try softening the fish pellets before tossing them to the fish see this thread where I discuss the technique. I always feed soft pellets to my fish because a small fish even a 3" fingerling can easily eat a soft 1/4" size squeezable pellet. This gets the small fish growing well even when using the 1/4" pellet that is mainly designed for adult fish.

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