Good advice and proposals but is anyone will to help bankroll the proposed two pond study?
I wouldn't bankroll a feeder and feed, nor landscaping and such. But if the OP were interested in setting up a small prey pond for HSB only I could help him acquire the GAMs and RSH.
In the supplementally fed pond. . .
That sounds a whole lot like you plan to deny the small prey pond feed and establish "feed as the food chain" We have a 6 month growing season and you "expect" the pond to fed 480 lbs/acre/year. Don't you think it insensible to compare a pond whose food chain "is feed" to one that isn't? Yeah, I was just thinking a modestly fertilized pond for both treatments with small prey in one and HBG as prey in the other ... you know ... compares apples (one food chain) and apples (another food chain) where the water parameters were otherwise similar. Feeding 480 lbs/acre is like adding more than ton of wet weight forage. Its also like adding a ton of manure to the pond after the fish excrete it.
With regard to habitat, I agree brush is most appropriate for a new pond. Its very effective habitat for PK shrimp by the way. Were it me I would go about the shrimp with the idea of just getting a base population going in the beginning. Most of the forage is going to be provided by GAMs and RSH. Until plants naturally establish, Shrimp will probably not be a dominate part of the prey mix. This may be true even later where GAMs and RSH utilize smaller Shrimp for food. They'll coexist but I think the minnows will be the dominant sources of prey. Were the pond mine, I might try to use the brush to exclude the larger HSB from portions of pond to form a forage area refuge larger than the brush. You know, kind of like a forage pond within the pond. Shallow areas that the HSB might avoid could also provide refuge (Lord knows the shallows do not deter LMB in the least ... especially the fingerling sizes).
Like Bill, I think your proposal will work for the first 3 or 4 years probably upon which you might declare the whole thing a success. But what about the OP who didn't actually want to feed? and didn't actually want to have to harvest a lot of fish? It shows your vision what a pond can be in first 3 or 4 years if you really push it. But won't the OP ultimately be left a pond that overproduces small fx hybrids? Isn't he headed for a fish kill? Or algaecide? Or herbicide? and a lot of other expenses ad-infinitum that he didn't express any interest in expending (Just like EVERYONE else following a similar regimen?). I see no recommendation for harvest ... no long term plan for a sustainable system. There is something to be said for a system designed to produce results in year 10 similar to the result in year 6 (4 years earlier). All that said, I suppose we could feed the small prey pond the same quantity of feed most of which would be converted by the HSB (and then recycled by the prey). It would be comparing apple to apples and I figure the small prey would add more forage than the HBG ... (though maybe not the TP which feed low on the food chain). Its just if all you are trying to do is say adding 480 lbs/acre of feed produces 240 lbs of fish directly and more by manuring the pond ... well then ...I concede that this is so. Absolutely. But it isn't a food chain, nor will it ever be, in my way of thinking.
