For a renovated 1.3 ac and you say the stocking numbers from a fish farm are held as proprietary? My advice is stay away from them. They are self serving and not interested in your best interest. The place is paranoid with a unnatural fear and very likely they do not want others to know how way out of normal their stocking numbers and advice are compared to good sound fishery advice. I suspect their stocking philosophy is to annually sell forage fish or predators to unbalanced situations.
Heavy BG with few bass is stocking plan for producing large bass. The same thing can be accomplished with first stocking a balanced number of BG-minnows allow then to reproduce then their high numbers will feed bass and allow them to grow quickly. Proper management then keeps those bass growing to large size. High numbers of Large panfish are usually rare in these situations.
You will get all sorts of stocking advice numbers from too low to too high. I would search for 2nd opinion advice from someone not selling you fish. However to get good 2nd & 3rd stocking and management opinions the adviser needs to know your goals for the fishery. Are your goals to get back to a decent panfish-bass fishery? Are extra large panfish and trophies desired or is a general size, active catch fishery acceptable?.
Are the grass carp and Israeli carp still there? Were all fish and water removed from the pond when it was renovated?. IMO 5ft max depth with a significant portion with less depth will always 'want' be a weed and algae factory. From the new start, due to pond basin average and low maximum depth you will have difficulty producing a high quality fishery for the long term of 10-30 yrs. An initial stocking could result in a decent fishery for the next 3-8yrs. By then over popuation and out of balance will likely gradually or the next years degrade the fishery. However, the pond is ideal as a hatchery and young of year pond where fish are grown for retail market. These ponds are drained and allowed to dry each year for weed and muck control and newly restocked each spring.
The pond could also be managed primarily as a quality catfish(CC) pond where the CC thrive in turbid water. Pellet feeding would enhance the production and how fast the fish are growing. See next section.
The flow through situation means you will have difficulty growing, developing a persistent green bloom on a regular basis due to nutrients constantly flushing out. Green blooms can help control filamentous algae and rooted vegetation do to reduced sunlight penetration. I think the current bloom is a result of renovation from newly exposed soils and leaching of nutrients will likely not persist for the next few years as the pond ages. As a standard clear water situation returns and nuisance weeds, algae regrow you will likely have to return to the turbid, muddy condition to keep vegetation in the ample shallow water from overtaking the pond. Pond dye will not stay for long in the pond due to almost constant flushing.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 10/11/17 11:17 AM.
