Pond Boss Forums PHOTO GALLERY Image Gallery My Dad's new Pond

These are some pictures of the pond my dad just built. The first few were taken before the pond was full to show what kind of habitat we have in there and some of the contouring we did. The next couple are what it looks like with the water in it. The pier in the picture was also built by him and a friend. If anyone wants more pictures I can upload some more just let me know what exactly you would like to see. I hope you enjoy them!

Very nice. What's the stocking plans?

Stocked it December 29th

1500 CNBG
1500 Native BG
800 RES
5000 FHM With a good mix of grass shrimp

Bass will go in June. 600 Florida Largemouth

Is that too high of a number for the LMB? What is the size of the pond? Which fish species do you want to do best as far as growths?

Not sure the exact number of LMB I will put in yet. Probably between 100 to 200 per acre. I need to do some more reading on this. I want to let the bream spawn once, maybe twice before I put the bass in.
I will build a feeder float this week and see if I can get the bream to eat. Water is 51degrees.

It is a 3.05 acre pond. Surveyed surveyed it with RTK GPS. It has a 2.5:1 slope going to 6 feet. The pond is 6 to 9 feet deep. Island in the middle. Ridges with structure as seen in photos. We did add a bit more structure after the posted photos were taken.

We are striving for a good bream pond with the ability to occasionally catch bass in the 3 to 6 pound range. Probably more of a bream pond than bass.

I left two spawning beds in 3 to 4 feet of water. One on the west Bank is 60'x40'
The one on the north bank (near the pier) is 40'x40'

I was just informed that there is a major error in the original posting by my son. It says "My Dad's New Pond". The correct caption, according to the Momma should read
" My Dad's and Mom's New Pond". Momma has has been involved in the entire project, from design to building the pier. This has been a wonderful project to work on. Can't wait to start catching fish with our grandchildren.

Beautiful!! Momma's done a great job.

You might want to look at LMB stocking numbers closely, unless you're planning on harvesting a lot of bass every year starting at Y2. Also, if goal is fishing with the GKs, and I can't think of a better, more worthwhile reason to have a pond, might consider using F1s instead of pure Fl LMB, which have a reputation for getting hooksmart pretty quickly. Just my totally unsolicited and therefore eminently worth ignoring $0.02 worth.

For a pond with a goal for kids fishing (high catch rates) 50 2-4 inch LMB per acre is plenty. I use 35 for normal stocking in southern ponds. I like for the BG and everything else to have spawned a full summer but it cam be done all in the spring. If I go the spring route then I stock some adult BG (50 per acre) in Feb/March along with the 2 inch BG then stock 2 inch LMB in May/June. That is not my preferred method however. Feeding helps a lot to get populations established well.

I appreciate the info.

I put the BG and FHM in at the end of December.
They BG were 1.5 to 2.5 inches. The FHM were small. I am hoping BG and FHM will be big enough to spawn in early spring. I guess I will keep an eye out for bream beds.
If I don't get a couple of spawns before June, I will probably hold off until this fall to put the bass in.

Anybody have any idea of survival rates and reproduction rates on the FHM how many should I have by the end of June??? I put in 5,000 at the end of December with the BG.

There's so many variables that it's be impossible to tell. It all depends on how much spawning habitat they have (FHM have different requirements than BG), how many places the YOY have to hide in, etc. The BG will eat some, but not near as many as LMB will!

That is one great looking habitat! Can you tell me a little but more about the structures?

This might help a bit.

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92463#Post92463

I don't have any idea on the reproduction rate of FHM but we put 30# in a 3.1 acre pond in mid March and by mid summer I seriously wondered if there was such a thing as over populating a pond with FHM. We could swim anywhere in the pond, hold still for a minute, and there would be 50+ of them pecking away at your body trying I guess for something to eat. I went scuba diving a couple of times and anywhere on the bottom except where the really cold water was in the deepest part (probably no oxygen) if I laid still they would find me within a few minutes and 50+ of them would again be pecking away at everything except my face (that mask looks too much like a big fish mouth I guess) including my scalp.

We had FHM everywhere.

But I put in LOTS of structure. I probably hit the 10-15%
level and that is quite a bit in a 3 acre pond. A fair amount specifically for FHM reproduction.

I may have ended up shooting myself in the foot. I hope I have not created so much small cover that there actually will be too much hiding places for the small BG so that they over populate.

If FHM have some places to lay their eggs on the under side of things, they will go crazy reproducing if there is not much predation.

I'm learning, most likely the hard way.

Super nice looking pond you have. Very similar in size to ours.

Our pond thread

snrub, I'd wager you are fine on the fish cover. IIRC Bob said a while back 20% cover is the target.