Thank you for the great thoughts and ideas everyone. I appreciate it. A bit more context on the plan. I originally wanted to add YP and Pumpkinseeds but haven’t been able to find them yet. Hopefully that will change and they can be our “in between” species. Also the pond is completely isolated from other water bodies (ie there is no stream in or out), with a small watershed keeping it topped up and a well available if needed.
Another interesting thing about the pond is we dug an 800’ long stream that circulates water from one end of the pond back to the other. The stream is 12’ wide, 2’ deep, and lined with rocks and pea gravel. I haven’t turned the pump on yet, but I’m hoping it will move around 100,000 gph, giving a flow of about 1.5 ft/s through the stream. So maybe that could be used to get walleye and some of the minnow species to spawn?
I like the idea of getting the grab bag, and then doing the sorting myself. I don’t have any experience with this, but I ordered the book you mentioned Bill and will do as much research as I can before attempting. Here is what I have so far:
KEEP: chubs, fathead minnow, common bluntnose minnows, golden shiner, spotfin shiner, common shiner, emerald shiner
REMOVE: green sunfish, bullheads, common carp, suckers, redhorse
Does that make sense?
Also any good online resources people have found for identifying minnows?
