Hello Everyone,
First I would like to say thanks to all of you, you may not know me but I scoured this site for over 2 years getting our pond setup rules and regs - you'all know how to do it.
My experience:
The pond was dug out 2yrs ago and it's the story of 2 sides, the east averages 4-5ft while the west 8-10ft. Clay bottom and very steep entry all around except for a boat ramp style area needed to exit the equipment. There are pallet structures, rock piles and bundles of branches for cover. When roughly half full I took the advice of Mr. Cody and put in FHM, RES and (my decision) GSH. Probably went a little crazy with forage fish (10lbs of each) but only 15 RES then just left it alone the entire first summer. This was easy, lots of property work needed done. That fall it became very apparent the minnows (both types) had been making sweet love so I added 35 4-6in YP and let it be. This spring there was no slow down with the minnows and what few perch came to eat all looked good so I added 12 6-8in HSB, 20 HBG 4-6in and 4 6-8in SMB, nothing too crazy.
Now sitting in October both hybrid varieties are doing very well, the HBG are fat and happy while the dozen HSB have become the dirty dozen - when feeding more than a couple of these fellas are clearly almost 13-14in. The SMB stay on the 5ft deep water and just cruise, they too seem to be doing fine. We have yet to "fish" the pond, maybe a couple casts right before feeding but the goal is a good start.
My thought was this year in a month or so adding 20 RBT for winter fishing, I find hard to believe they would upset the current balance, and then next year in spring another 4-6 SMB early spring followed by 20 Tilapia for FA control when available in June. More or less the RBT die off replaced by the Tilapia. Seems like it would work and spring 2022 should contain both SMB and YP spawn if the current bunch somehow cleans up the minnow population.
Thoughts appreciated.
