Thinking about building a pond

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timberjack86

timberjack86

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I am purchasing some land near my home about 8 acres and was thinking about building a pond soley for fishing. How big should I build my pond to hold, bass,catfish,bluegill, and yellow perch and mabey something else thrown in. I own my own dozer so this is no big deal. I already have a spillway planned. I am thinking about an 1 acre pond. Any tips?
 
A friend of my Dads has a 6 acre pond that he stocked with Florida strain largemouth, hybrid bluegill, and crappie(white,black,&black nose). He also stocked some sort of baitfish for them to eat, but I can't remember which kind. His pond is 40-50 feet deep, and has shelfs, boulders, rock piles, and a lot of sunken trees and brush. He stocked it in June 2010, and the bass are about a pound to a pound and a half, the bluegill are huge, and the crappie should be fillet sized this spring.
 
cats, bass and bluegill and minnows. our biggest cat was a 5 pound 12 ounce so far. we have some bass that will weigh 3-4 pounds. gills are as big as my hand
 
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timberjack86 said:
Probably a stupid question but How long does it take the bass and catfish to grow?
Click to expand...
I don't really know, but I know that some channel cats in a city pond were pushing 5 pounds 2 years after stocking... I think they may have been around 10 inches or so when stocked, but I dont remember for sure. Oh and that lake is full of gizzard shad and fat bellied catfish.
 
First thing you do is check legality issues. Lots of people lost a lot of money when the dam failed or pond flooded. Be sure who your downhill neighbor is.

Know a guy personally who lost everything he had when his dam broke and his little three-acre pond flooded is downhill neighbor's house. Water travels quite a ways when there is a lot of it.
 
Good advice bowriter. Ask the state to help you look it over. I have a 3 acre pond (9 million gallons) they helped me with and they just finished surveying another one that i am digging. Great people to work with. As mentioned earlier, pondboss.com forum is the other thing i would suggest.
Good luck and you will be happy you built it.
 
Get some fisheries biologist input before stocking things like crazy. Folks start tossing fishing from other ponds in there, and mistakes happen that are hard to un-do.

For example, I tossed a few small catfish in our pond as a kid, and didn't realize they were bullheads. That practically ruined the pond from all the little babies they had.

Crappie are another species of fish that often don't do very well in smaller bodies of water, so you have to be careful with them. Not sure about yellow perch. I think water temperature is the limiting factor there.
 
timberjack86 said:
I am purchasing some land near my home about 8 acres and was thinking about building a pond soley for fishing. How big should I build my pond to hold, bass,catfish,bluegill, and yellow perch and mabey something else thrown in. I own my own dozer so this is no big deal. I already have a spillway planned. I am thinking about an 1 acre pond. Any tips?
Click to expand...
I wouldn't think that yellow perch would be very suitable for a small pond. Wouldn't they tend to overrun it very quickly?
 
Crosshairy is dead on. Before we started stocking the ponds in AL, we did a heck of a lot of research and had a ton of help from the fisheries biologists. The smartest thing we did was put 1-million threadfin shad in the two 50-acre lakes to start the bass.

When you put fish in a pond or lake, you have to also put food in to get them started.
 
This is a five-year old bass. I know this because the pond is only five-years old and we stocked it then. This is the product of good feeding to start with. It was not unusual to catch 30 of thses a day with afew larger.

Outdoors-TopWater1.jpg
 
Yep, good idea to give your baitfish 1 year before stocking your other species. Know how your fish species interact, keep an eye on it and you could have yourself a little slice of heaven.
 
Thanks guys, I own 5 acres down below the pond where the runoff will occur. I am going to check on the yellow perch and see how fast they reproduce. I dont want a pond full of them. I was thinking buying the fish as hatchlings from a hatchery. Florida bass, channel cats ,plus bluegill and mabey some other baitfish.
 
One of the biggest factors is ratios of species. How many bluegill to how many bass etc. I'd hold off a couple years on the catfish if it was me or at least stock a very small percentage.
 

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