Thanks QA for enduring that short book and providing your input.
Do I understand this correctly? You're thinking that without good numbers of YP (a small-medium sized predator) in the mix, that the top-end predator would quickly overpopulate? I.e., the YP don't function just as forage, but also as a control on YOY SMB (the apex predator)?
I guess I should add a few more details of what I'm planning so far. I'm hoping/wishing for a reproducing population of SMB. I think having YP to eat and for some diversity would be nice. My only concerns with this would be what limiting factors we'll run into. I don't think that the pond will support a super high biomass, because in the short-term, my family doesn't have the appetite to install aeration (pond's about 700ft from power, so they balked at the cost whenever I put together estimates for a system), and I'm not counting on being able to feed. So, my last thought/question was mainly just exploring whether it might make sense to cut back on YP, since I'm concerned that going heavy on them might tie up a lot of our limited biomass potential (no aeration) and put us at more of a risk of a fish kill or predators decimating the forage base. Also note that we're planning to initially stock the SMB in quite low numbers, like 12ish at about 6-8" (so about 24/acre).
Maybe I should be more concerned about predator management, but at the moment I'm thinking we shouldn't have much problem containing the SMB population given that it's only a 0.5ac pond, and we have some quite good anglers in the family who would be thrilled if we made it our mission to harvest 50 slot-sized SMB a year. With our low initial stocking of SMB, I'm thinking that should be a slow enough start that we'd have plenty of time to see any big predator overpopulation issues brewing before they got too bad. I mean, IIRC we probably stocked LMB to BG at a horrid 1:2 ratio or worse 18-20 years ago, we practiced pure catch and release, and had no predator to control LMB, and it took probably 8-10 years to become mediocre with LMB overcrowding. I've also contemplated adding a few (like 8-10) adult PS a few years down the road as a crisis remediation plan if the SMB start to overpopulate and decimate the forage base, since Dr. Willis seemed to have some success with that combo (though it's debatable how much the PS really controlled the SMB in that experiment, because they also harvested SMB heavily), and because IME PS are much less prolific than BG (all ponds around here have them and BG, but I've never seen a pond with them even decently populated, or more than a 1:5 ratio of PS to BG; their population always just seems to barely limp along just shy of extirpation in the typical LMB ponds around here).
It very well may be true that heavy stockings of YP help control YOY SMB. In that case, would a large population of medium-large GSH also eat enough SMB eggs and fry to control YOY in the absence of YP?
