Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Property Projects & Construction What did you do at your pond today?

The pond i put the CNBG in is approximately 3/4 to 1 acre, cashew shaped, and is still a tad muddy. There is one brushpile, and that's where the fish were added, and will be fed. Only 1/4" pellets will be fed.

My current plan is to manage the water numbers, and walk away. One of the most common pond issues is an overpopulation of LMB, and the difficultly in getting a forage/predator balance restored. I'm taking the opposite route by giving the stocked CNBG a year to spawn, and hopefully have 10's if not 100's of thousands of stunted CNBG fry and fingerlings. This fall, I'll stock another 100-200 3-4" CNBG from my hatchery pond. I'm up for our electroshocking next year, and will get it the last week of March, or the first week of April, and pull 15-20 female LMB out for neighbor's pond. If a male is accidentally stocked, then I would think the ravenous small CNBG would handle a LMB bed or two. Since 1/4" pellets are all that will be thrown to the small number of breeder sized CNBG, the YOY should have slow growth and hopefully be runts, and not outgrow the LMB gape.

The only real negative is the productivity time table being drug out until next year(the neighbor is good with that since he has other ponds), and the potential difficulty in catching the LMB with artificial lures.

The positives are that adjustments will be easy to fix by stocking additional LMB a few at a time, very low fish food usage, lower biomass, and no issues with high nutrient levels from fish waste. If the grand kids just want to catch CNBG, then the "jumpers" can always be fed by adding 1/8" pellets to the feeder, and accelerate their growth.

Bottom line, if the pond gets broken, it'll be easy to fix.

A couple of colorful CNBG