Chandler in a private message asks:
“ “I would love to introduce bass only, but I need to know how to feed them. You say they will eat their own fry, but what if there is no fry in the beginning. I have pellets. Is that enough?””
Note – This pondowner has already stocked fathead minnows so small minnows are available. YES - high protein pellets are enough if the bass are pellet trained direct from the fish farm otherwise, if they(LMB) do not eat pellets, by themselves in a pond results in them staying around 9”-13” long. Bass as predators need lots of food to grow – 10 lb of live food per fish is needed to gain a pound. YES for eating primarily pellets applies more as a YES with HSB compared to LMB. See below for more info about pellet trained LMbass.
Or
“Can I have bluegill and bass?”
“I was thinking 15-20 bass and 50 bluegill.” A prey predator ratio of 1:3.
“My grandchildren would get a bang out of catching the bluegill.”
ANSWERS
First the fish density - He is thinking of adding 15 LMB and 50 BG = 1:3.3
One bass to 2.5 or 3.3 BG. In a 50ftX55ft which is 0.06 ac, this equates to 240 bass/ac and 800 BG/ac. This is way too many stocker fish in a tiny pond. Way fish over crowded for healthy water and healthy fish. Current most common stocking guidelines are 100 LMB and 500BG / acre. Thus the 240LMB to 800BG is way too many fish for 2700ft2. Maybe not too many initially as fingerlings, but as soon as the fish are 1 yr old problems are very likely to begin. If these all these fish are fed pellets there will soon be water quality problems and likely fish deaths from too much fish biomass for the limited water volume. Your grandkids will not get much of a ‘bang’ from seeing lots of dead fish. Quality fish balance based on size of pond is much more important than having lots of fish.
Pellet trained bass can exist on a primary diet of pellets providing the pellets have high protein and nutrient balance, at least 40% protein. Free ranging bass only eating pellets will get an added low amount of nutrition from the small amount of natural foods they find in the pond.
Mixing BG and LMB In A Tiny Pond, This is the traditioinal pond stocker fish combination. However in a pond less than 0.2 ac (many say one acre), it becomes a difficult time especially long term when managing the reproduction from both BG & LMB and keeping a balance where both species grow well and are angler quality. A pretty difficult feat in a tinypond. Fish balance with growth is hard to achieve without lots of frequent management effort and then 1 or 2 bass would not be much bigger than 2 maybe 2 lbs – 14”-15” and the remainder mostly 8”-12”. One specie of the BG-LMB very often tends to overpopulate for one reason or another which often happens in many ponds even larger ponds. However the smaller the pond is, the more prone it will have an overpopulation of the BG or the LMB. This also tends to be true with most of the other common sportfish combos used in tiny ponds. This is why catfish only is often used as the main fish for small ponds. However even catfish can reproduce in a pond and overpopulate when adequate predators are not present or adequate harvest does not happen.
The other problem with the BG-LMB small pond combo is if the LMB original stockers are pellet trained, most of their offspring will NOT eat pellets. Thus the majority of these bass offspring grow very slowly and top out at around 11”-12” due to lack of food and crowding for space and food. After your original stocker larger pellet eating bass die, you have slim chances of getting LMB bigger than 10”-12” because the LMB usually will keep reproducing, and then tend to become crowded, overpopulate and over eat the food source. When overcrowded they over eat the small BG. As the biggest oldest BG begin to gradually die from old age, you eventually have no or too few BG and overcrowded small bass. This is a management dilemma and problems to deal with providing if you want quality size fish especially if one wants larger sized fish. Growing larger fish in a mini-pond is a special management situation that IMO requires a unique stocker fish combination and good management.
Bottom Line. The BG-LMB combination is a very difficult for one to be successful in a small pond unless special management is used or you are satisfied with numerous small fish.
Some on the Forum have used the redear sunfish(RES) as a panfish. They reproduce sparingly although they, direct from the fish farm, are not pellet trained. Plus they are hard to pellet train. Often RES do not grow fast when proper foods are not present. RES as the main forage fish do not reproduce enough for bass to grow over 12”-13”. It is often said on the Forum that RES do not overpopulate and stunt. RES overpopulating is rare, but I have seen it happen. Anglers say they (RES) are fairly difficult to catch which makes them a poor choice for young anglers.
The best plan IMO for the small pond to have primarily larger sized fish is to not use fish that can cause overpopulation problems which means all they basically do is grow if they have enough food. One should think of finding and using sport fish that will not reproduce or don’t reproduce. The other key to success of big fish in a small pond is to stock fish that grow well on pellets thus you do not have to rely on small fish to feed the predators to make them grow big. Limited or stable numbers, feed quality pellets, and watch them grow.
If one is really serious about having catchable edible panfish and some larger quality predators in the mini-pond, I refer back to my earlier post. For panfish use tilapia (TP) and predators use hybrid striped bass HSB.
Tilapia are available in larger sizes. 6"-7" stocker tilapia can grow to 12-15" by late summer in Texas. Big panfish indeed! They readily eat pellets and grow faster than any other panfish 2” per month. The bigger the stocker size the faster they are ready for exciting the anglers. A 14" tilapia fights as hard as a 14" LMB. They are very hard fighters for their size. Plus they eat your algae problems and you can later eat them; a win, win. You never have to worry about overpopulation because they all die every late fall with water drops to 50F, They need to be replaced each spring but this is a low, well money very spent cost compared to ALL the great benefits they provide based on goals of quality fish for the mini-pond. Great panfish for a low maintenance mini-pond.
For the large fish use hybrid striped HSB. They do not reproduce in ponds - so no overpopulation problems. Put and take as needed. They eat pellets very aggressively with lots of surface splashing. They grow fast and big, plus pull on the fish pole like a race car.
Both of these pellet eating specialty fish can be readily caught by anglers using highly flavorful artificial fish pellets. The best brand is from Stubby Steve.
