Plants - The Vallisneria's growth is encouraging. Sagittaria may have been planted too deep in the sediment. I always recommend to plant some of the shipment in shallow tubs placed in shallow water to get it started - then later transplant.
Fish - Small fish as you described do appear to be LMB. Introduction was either from water in-flowage from the mountain stream or your friends decided to do you a favor and stock a few adults that reproduced to produce small bass. Since the pond is fed by a mountain stream - if you are lucky the fish with lateral body stripe might not be LMB??? Only catching one will verify it. Them not biting on a worm baited hook MAY suggest they are not LMB? Any sort of tiny stream entering a pond always has some fish species even as fish fry in it. Your pond also very likely has other fish species introduced from the feeder stream. Baited minnow traps may help determine what species are present.
As LMB start reproducing they will ruin the very vulnerable minnow populations due to too intense predation. Practically all minnow species soon become extinct with the predation pressure of abundant wolf hungry young LMB. In this situation You can't remove significant numbers of LMB predators because this allows BG to overpopulate. You now have a sad state of affairs considering you wanted a YP-SMB fishery. Diligent sampling and determining what species that were introduced by the stream should help with your management as you move forward.
Are you positive the sunfish fish are BG and not green sunfish? GSF always invade from tiny streams and rivulets. Almost every small stream in eastern US has GSF. It is possible that the invading small fish are some other sunfish species. Catching or trapping some will verify species ID.
IMO you are stuck with a BG-LMB dominated pond. At this point you can add some YP (4"-6") that will populate for several years until the initial stockers die of old age. By then the LMB will have become very dominate to where they have essentially eaten all the young YP to where no offspring survive to reproduce. YP due to slender shape and behavior are much preferred as prey for LMB compared to BG. Only dense cover will allow a few YP to survive to be breeding adults. Problem with this is the dense cover also then allows BG to overpopulate and skew the fishery toward BG dominance. YP reproduce once a year and BG reproduce throughout the summer. The YP, if any are able to survive, will be the rare bonus fish after 5-7 yrs. The first several years things will be good for YP but gradually the population declines.
Good luck in moving forward with the pond. In this thread I would like to hear updates as to the pond's progress and development.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 06/28/23 02:39 PM.
