CityDad, it's just two sides of a coin. There's tremendous joy in both sides.
My main 4.5 acre pond was existing for some 30-40+ years when we acquired it, so no do-overs there.
Now, my 1/4 acre neighborhood retention pond is one that I started from scratch. In this case, there was no option to make it any larger or smaller, or put in dirt humps/islands.
For the 1/4 acre pond, I could only have stocked it differently. The original stocking was bucket stocking from my 4.5 acre pond with LMB, Bluegill, and Yellow Perch, after having put in golden shiners and fatheads. Then I added some , SMB, HSB and CC.
In hindsight, I would have gone straight SMB, with Yellow Perch and Redear Sunfish. And a few CC.
