Funny thing this thread, because I was just down to my new pond today and saw two fish that I did not stock. As a matter of fact, I have not stocked ANY gamefish, only just deposited 500 FH and 250K GSH fry into the brand new pond 3 weeks ago. Today as I walked the banks and stood stunned over the gazillion minnows at every turn, I saw two strange looking fish chasing one another. Both about 3-4 inches with some sort of brown and light striping. No clue what they were, but I sure did not put them there. Now, one thing that may be common to new ponds like mine that may help explain is this: Before the pond filled up with water, there was a small brook feeding it that slowly got full of water for a couple weeks prior to closing off its exit. That fed into an old tiny hole of water, which also emptied downstream into an old farm pond. Now those fish could have entered from either end. They could have somehow been in the upper end of the small brook, or in the tiny little "pond" downstream, or even remotely possible to have come upstream from the old farm pond about 300 yards down stream. The problem with theory number one? The little brook always dried up during late summer. No way for fish to survive on the dry ground, unless somehow buried in the mud like I have heard of some species doing. Theory number two, in the tiny catch pond? Problem, we drained out the tiny little pond when we keyed in the dam, since it was in the way. Theory number three, swimming upstream from the farm pond? The fish would have had do a salmon like leap of 25 feet from the stream bed below the dam over the dam and into the new pond. Or they could have lept only 4 feet up into the spillway drain pipe and then shimmied up the 20 feet of pipe at the pond end, exiting into the new pond as well. So far, my guess is the little brook that held a few feet of water in it for a few weeks while the dam was finished, somehow had some of these little fish that had managed to swim upstream from the tiny pond and either were buried in mud or somehow survived long enough. Either that or some bird dropped them into the pond.
