Hello all, I've come here to learn. What a great resource this site is. I'm learning a lot already.
I'm trying to help a friend of mine restock his lake. Previous owner pumped a good bit of water out of it in 2011 during the big drought, so it went dry. It's currently almost full and covers about 50 surface acres. It's not an incredibly deep lake - maybe 12-15' at the deepest. Shallow sloping banks, so it's less than 5-6' deep around the edges. Looking at historical images on Google Earth, it's about 30 acres most of the time. It used to be great fishing, but it has not been restocked since going dry. I took kayaks out recently and paddled around and fished. Zero bites. Zero sightings of fish. No swirls anywhere. No baitfish in the shallows anywhere on the lake. The lake appears to have few, if any, fish. So golden opportunity to restock it and do it right. Owner's goals are to grow big bass, but also wants easily catchable fish for his grandkids. He's not much of a fisherman himself.
Based on what I'm learning here and in talking to some other friends who have done well stocking their lakes and ponds, here is what I'm thinking so far. Any advice for changes would be appreciated though.
Establish bait fish food chain this year. Stock FHM, CNBG, and RES this spring. Stock a mix of Florida bass and native and/or F-1s next year, for a balance of growth potential and catchability. But how many of all of those should we stock? HUGE question with a large lake. It seems to me that we should stock it for the 30 acres that it typically covers. It's not normally this wet in West Texas. He won't be pumping out of it, but it's still not going to stay full all the time. The expense to stock even 30 acres won't be small. So what would be a recommended stocking rate for the baitfish? I know the FHMs will reproduce prolifically. The sunfish less so, but still should produce lots of fry themselves, with no predators in the water for a while.
Am I on the right track? How many baitfish should we be stocking? Are FHM, CNBG and RES what you'd stock, or something else? And then how many bass next year? Don't want to over stock and get overpopulated too quickly, but also don't want to stock too few and take years to get decent fishing.
