We have a half acre pond thats about 10' deep at the deep end and tapers to the inflow thats an inch deep. Id guess its about 700,000 gallons. We were told it had large bass but we have not seen any indication of any so we assume they maybe died in a fishkill.
The pond has lots of adult golden shiners, blunt nose minnows, minnows and sunfish with a single 24" (fat) Koi. These bait fish readily take food and come to the dock when they see or hear something. Most of the sunfish around the dock are tiny in the inch to 3" range with just a handful of 4-5" ones. I did catch one through the ice in the winter that may have been 7" or so. There is also a massive amount of frogs and tadpoles. Must have been 10,000s of over wintered TP as they scattered from the shore as you walk along.
We do not have any cover at all in the water yet. We are still pumping muck out as time and water levels allow with a full trash pump. Once that is done I plan to add some artificial habitat. There is very little plant life as well, some seaweed at the shallow end and some sort of carpet-like plant along the edges. The tadpoles appear to be keeping that at bay and we previously had a family of muskrats which the dog probably scared away.
When the fish feed I'd guess there have been 200 total fish at the most. Why would the sunfish all be small? Would there be too many fish to support overall? I'd think we would see more fish if that was the case or perhaps the bigger ones do not come to feed. The shiners appear well fed with most of them over 3-4".
I would like a mix of nice sized sunfish and a few LMB. I realize I will need to add structure before LMB or I may not have bait for very long.
