Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Hybrid striped bass and walleye, when to add

Fishinrod makes a very good point. Those dock oriented fish I think will learn to wait for the welfare injured food fish. It has been proven fish can learn. I contend that predators key-in and have learned to recognize vulnerable foods. Explore the behavior literature.

Many many fish die each year of old age and are never seen in a pond / lake. What happens to all those small fish that get weak and die each year of old age? Thousands of them. Look up the life spans of smaller fish. Predators instinctively eat the most vulnerable. Natural selection and Survival of the fittest and Darwinism.

This relates back to supplemental stocking fish in your pond. Sometimes those stocked fish are not the healthiest and you may see a few dead ones. If the pond has a few predators present when the new fish were added, IMO you only sew about 1%-5% of the dead ones. The other 95%-99% of those near death new fish were gorged upon by the resident predators. Predators instinctively eat the most vulnerable. I have killed a few ponds in my day. I have seen predators that before they died gorged on as many small dying floundering fish as they could capture.