Stocking a freshwater pond in central Virginia

[Redfish12]

Some friends of mine have a farm in Charlotte County VA with 4 ponds. Growing up I spent many weekends at this farm and a lot of my time was focused on these ponds. The fishing was spectacular! One pond would produce 4lb+ bass and smaller bass just about every cast and the other would produce Crappie up to about 2lbs.

Well word must have gotten out because these things got poached hard. I was still able to catch bass bc I grew up fishing for bass on Smith Mountain Lake from shore, which is nearly impossible bc of all the fishing pressure and limitations of shore fishing. I still did ok and I have a nice trophy mounted on my wall from there. Anyway... the ponds are no longer much fun and fishing is tough. I fished there two weekends ago and instead of my normal performance, I struggled for about 10 bass just longer than 10" and one about 1.5lbs. I think they are stunted. The crappie are non-existent and were breeding well before they were picked out. I'm worried that since the bass and bluegill have been picked out that the crappie no longer have a food source.

Anyway, long story short - They want to start over or replenish their ponds. Do any of you have any experience with managing a pond? Or do you have any recommended species?

I told them they should restock with largemouth (some in the 4-8 range and some fingerlings), bluegill, crappie (in the deeper pond with trees), and possibly some other food source minnow like the fathead or shiner.

Do you think trout could live in a pond that is spring fed and about 22 feet deep? I've never taken water temps there, but I know trout need cold water in the summer. Do you think putting hybrids in to eat the stunted bass would be a good idea to start over - they're sterile so you could always thin them back down.

I don't think Walleye or smallies would be suited to these ponds. I guess I should give some background there...

Pond 1 - Maybe 4 acres (I'm not a good judge) and deepest is about 15-17 feet. Has some structure from an old barn and fallen trees. A small creek feeds the pond, seems to be mostly run off from the fields above. Previously stocked with largemouth and bluegill, now contains stunted largemouth and I have not seen a bluegill in years. Main food source- frogs, bugs, and juvenile fish. (the bass here will not take a crayfish)

Pond 2 - Previously a forest, filled with treetops sticking out. Contains crappie, lmb, bluegill, and channel catfish. I have caught very few bluegill lately, only 1 channel cat in the 12 years I've fished there, and very rarely do I catch a crappie there now. Mostly stunted lmb, but they are hard to come by. I used to catch 1 - 2 lb lmb, and up to about 2lb crappie. Spring and run off fed.

Pond 3 - Largest of the ponds but quite shallow, maybe 8ft at most. Cows destroyed the vegetation in and around the pond years ago and it never recovered. It's full of stunted bass. Run off fed.

Pond 4 - Smallest of the ponds, full of downed trees and is basically just the run off from the larger pond. It was not stocked but contains bass and bluegill. It's actually the healthiest of the ponds right now and I caught a 1.5lb there the other weekend that I released. Used to be a lot of turtles in this pond, not the case now, fish seem to be rebounding. Fed from run off of larger pond, unsure how deep it is, would guess under 8ft.

Ok so that's a lot of stuff for what I meant to be a simple question... Thanks for the help guys!

[Redfish12]

Oh and mostly mud/sand bottoms from what I can tell. The tree ponds are full of dead leaves and things like that.

[DOGFISH]

A good food sourse is needed first and will have to be established before the game fish will take. There are several places on the internet that provide information on setting up and maintaining ponds. It can be a difficult thing to keep going. As surprising as it may be, walleye will survive in ponds. Bassmasters, BASS, used to have information on setting up ponds. I don't know if they still do that sort of thing since ESPN bought BASS.

The one good thing is that it looks like a group of investors, sportsman, are going to now buy BASS. Good luck on re-establishing those ponds. It is a fine balance, when manageing a pond. The one thing is, that you must control overfishing. As you can see, all of the larger fish will be taken and only small stunted fish will remain.

Good Luck

[Capt C-Hawk]

Michael, try posting this on Pacemaker, several of the members are connected with a guy named John Odenkirk. From previous posts over there it sounds like he's a pond expert for VA and has advised them on their community lakes. If I'm not mistaken it's a free service.

Ok so that's a lot of stuff for what I meant to be a simple question... Thanks for the help guys!

[Redfish12]

Great idea!

[esmd]

Redfish

I would guess that the subject of small pond management is of interest to a lot of people. If you can give us an update on this every once in a while, it would be greatly appreciated.

[Redfish12]

I'll pull down the responses I got on another board and add them here. In the end my friend's family decided to do nothing and see how the ponds rebound. There were a lot of large bass in there growing up and the past 5 or so years it has been mostly stunted small bass. The crappie were huge and plentiful throughout so hopefully they will bounce back quickly.

We are also going to try to catch and remove some of the smaller fish to help. I'll let you know how it goes.

[jet]

there are actually regulations to what you can add to private ponds, at least in md, could be different in va,

but i would think largemouth and crappie would eb the standard. be careful with catfish as they can overtake a pond if you put too many juvies in.

[ictalurus]

Pond management isn't my thing, but it is mentioned in some of the fisheries management books I have. I'll take a look. There are textbooks dedicated solely to pond management, and your friends might be able to check them out from a university library.

If I recall correctly (don't hold me to this), there's an order to how things are stocked. It might be start with minnows and lmb juveniles in the spring, then add bluegill later. That way, the bluegill don't get too big for the lmbs to eat. However, there are options for big bass ponds, big bluegill ponds, and somewhere in between. Regardless, the sunfish have to be harvested almost continuously because they're prolific and quick to stunt.

[Redfish12]

I'm fairly certain that when my friend's father paid to have the ponds built and stocked that either DNR, hatchery rep, or the contractor that had experience in building ponds set up the original mix. They were all stocked at the same time and when I first started fishing there they seemed to be in good balance- meaning you could see small bait in ths shallows, there was a distribution of sizes in the fish, and the fish did not seem to be all head/skinny body.

He and his family were not really interested in fishing and I believe I was the first to fish pond 1 ever. It was actually pretty incredible bc the fish would explode on everything you threw. I had just received some banjo fishing minnows as a gift (remember the infomercials?) and the frogs were especially deadly. We caught several bass over 5lbs in about 20 mins and freaked out to show his Dad. It was great back then... many fish frys later, the ponds were still fishing well because we would leave the large fish and take the mid range fish for the most part. The pond with crappie seemed overrun with crappie bc you would hardly ever catch a bass. I only ever got one catfish there, and I have tried many times since. After the overfishing started, the bass made a rebound and then everything was stunted and eventually nonexistant.

This post was put up last September, since then the contractors that were building a cabin and eating every single fish they caught (I think the ponds were their primary foodsource) have finished and left the property. The fences have been re-enforced, trespassing warnings increased, and more watchful eyes on the property. The cows are gone and no one has fished them really. I am going down soon and will report back on how they rebounded. I believe we are going to stock trout in one of the ponds this fall for fun, we'll see.

Hopefully things will balance themselves back out.