Pond question.
 

What would be the smallest pond I could build that would supply me efficently with hybrid sunfish (perch) per year. I want to stock it with hybrid sunfish only every spring and hopefully fill the freezer with plenty at the end of summer. Family of 4.

How deep? How wide and long?

I have no idea what the answer to your questions are but do you plan to stock fingerlings & if so will they grow out to a nice size only being in there from spring till fall ? There is a nice sized pond on my FIL's farm that was stocked with hybrid bluegill several years ago .
They are a really nice size now but I have no idea how long it took them to grow that big . I have always heard sunfish & bluegill are the same fish called by the two different names . Do you know if this is true ?

sunfish is a general term, bluegill,crappie,even smallmouth bass, ect.
bluegill is an actual species.

So all bluegill are sunfish but not all sunfish are bluegill....lol

When I was in school our ponds would produce about 500 lbs/acre/yr in a well managed fish pond stocked with bass and bluegill. Keep in mind that was in Alabama and the ponds were being managed by some very experienced people.

That was with fertilization driving the system. If you fed pellets you would boost production but also your cost and increase the instability of they system.

You'll need to search "aquaculture" for specific info on lb. fish to cubic ft water.They have to have enough room to grow. You can also enhance growth by feeding.It doesn't have to be costly. We use "road kill" and fish waist from cleaning as a food source for the fish. We take a cage made of rabbit wire and put the scraps/road kill in them and hang them over the water. Flies lay eggs that turn to spikes(maggots) and fall off into the water keeping a constant supply of food available for the fish. The only thing you must do using this method is to insure the Roadkill etc does not dry out.As long as it remains fresh and moist the flies will use it.
Spikes feed on this until they reach the right size then normally have to go to the ground to continue turning into a fly so the fall off into the water and never become a fly.It's amazing how fast fish will grow using this method.


Wade

no they are not the same critter..but both of them get parasites unless you get the pumpkinseed ones that are immune to the parasites..you probably need a pretty deep pond for their health..check your local fish hatcheries

If you add "redear" or "shellcracker" as they are known in the south they will clean up the parasite in a year or so depending on how many you use.We added 50 to one of our ponds 2 years ago because of the parasite. It shows up as small black specks or larger yellow Seed looking things when filleting the fish. We now rarely see them.Over time they will come back but it's just good pond management to fish a pond hard to keep the balance of fish per spacing and to refresh your stock. Next year we will start keeping redear from this pond then 6-7 years from now the parasite will show up again so we start all over again.

Wade

Yes shellcrackers are a good choice if your state allows them because they eat the snails that are the host of the flukes (trematodes) that Wade was talking about.

Those flukes won't hurt you or even taste bad if you cook the fillets thoroughly so it's not mandatory to get rid of them and the black spots normally are near the skin layer so skinning removes most of them.

See this guy's website, Bill. http://www.suttlefish.com/index.html
My understanding is that they will grow about three inches per year if you feed them, so you might have to buy 3 inch ones in order to grow them out the first year. This guy recommends no larger than an acre for hybrids. I would shoot for a half acre pond, ten feet deep at one end, tapering to four feet at the other. That way you could spawn and grow regular bluegills if hybrids don't work out, plus have a swimming area.

geo

Speaking of feeding fish , several years ago I was planning a farm type pond primarly for the purpose of stocking with fish & then fishing it . This was at a previous property I owned . I did quite a bit of research about the pond building & the stocking of it . I have forgotten much of what I read .
I did have the pond built but it leaked through under the dam & wouldn't hold much water so I never stocked it .
Somewhere during my research I obtained a catalog from a supplier that had & sold equipment & supplies that one might want if you had a pond . In that catalog they sold a bug zapper type light that you suspended on a cable over the pond . This zapper didn't fry the bugs , it just stunned them & they fell into the water .
The light had a photocell that turned it on at dark & off at daylight . I thought it sounded like a really good idea . If it worked as advertised it should have produced lots of basically free fish food .
I don't remember the name of the company & don't know if I still have the catalog . I have lots of magazines , books & reading material stored away in a storage trailer at my country place .
I seem to remember that the company was located in Georgia but I wouldn't swear to that .

I am not an expert, but I do have some experience. I would recommend no smaller than half acre and an acre is better. I would not recommend only one species. A good mix is largemouth bass, bluegill and red ear sunfish. Both bluegill and red ear are in the sunfish group of fish along with many others. The problem most people have is the don't remove enough bluegills and end up with hundreds of thousands of tiny bluegill that end up stunted at 4 or 5 inches long, and for some reason they still want to shoot every heron and turtle they see. The other thing is the pond needs to be about 3 feet or deeper right to the shore and 10 feet or more at the center of the dam. You might want to read up on channel catfish as an alternative, cause they are a lot easier to catch on line reliably for food and easier to seine if you want to put them up for food. And they will successfully spawn once you learn how.

Well,you are spot on with this post except for one thing. The catfish may spawn but the eggs will NOT survive without a high volume of moving water! We have put catfish in our ponds since they were built back in the 60s and NEVER 1 offspring! We "notch" each catfish we put in and have never taken one that was not notched.
You are absolutely right about the bluegill. People think they should not fish the pond "Until the fish grow up".If you don't fish it HARD they won't grow up.The more you fish it the healthier the pond will be.
One fast way to get a pond in balance is to put 50 crappie in the mix.They are fry eating machines.If you do this you will have to plan on fishing it hard for crappie in a couple years. Many people won't use crappie because they don't think you can fish them out but you can. We've done this 4-5 times and there's not much more fun that getting into crappie when they are hungry.My neighbor has stocked crappie,bluegill,redear,bass and catfish and has been able to keep them in perfect balance.He fishes it hard and that's what it takes.

Wade

Make sure you look into water rights. It was in Jackson County, OR that a landowner was jailed for refusing to drain his ponds that the county said he was using illegally as water catchment. Even though it was used regularly by the rural fire district for fire and was thee only source of water in the area for fire. Pretty sure it was a county regulation and not state, but I may not be remembering quite right.

To get channel catfish to spawn in a pond requires a "cave" of sorts. Some people use buckets with lids. They cut a 6" hole in the lid and the male will stay in the bucket and keep other fish away as well as create water movement over the egg mass. They'll do the same thing with a clump of tree roots.

Some commercial breeders used ammo cans with a large hole cut in it.

I've seen our bullheads use abandoned muskrat burrows for their "cave". If you walk along the shoreline of my lake you can see their tails sticking out of the burrow. Then a few weeks later you see dead males floating along the shoreline. They died because of the stress of spawning and guarding the egg masses.

That's good to know John! Thanks! The only cats I've ever seen spawn in a pond were "yellowbellys" or "mudcat" as we call them!

Wade

It's nice because it allows you to control the population unlike sunfish that tend to overproduce fry. Try setting the bucket in 3-5' of water.

Those yellowbellys are probably yellow bullheads. I think they are a beautiful fish.

As far as I am concerned they are the tastiest caftish there is.Most people ignore them because they don't get big like the other cats but they make quite a meal!

Wade

1shotwade,

I was going to answer about catfish spawning, but fishhead already did.

My answer would be build it as big and deep as you can afford and the watershed allows, help fight off drought that way, too. I bet most people look at their pond and wish it was bigger, I know I do.

Ya! Both you guys are on top of me today! Thanks,

Wade

Thanks for the info. I've heard of both of these methods and have thought about using them. The bug zapper ideal I have thought about using a timer. Let it come on at sundown and turn off about 4 hours later. Usually after about 4 hours of dark theres not many insects scurrying around anymore for the rest of the night.

Thanks for the info everyone. I like all species of fish but the smaller sunfish such as bluegills, pumpkin seeds and redears are my favorite on the dinner plate. Crappie too. I've also thought about raising these species in stock tanks too. Might be a lot cheaper then building a half-acre pond and still have good results.

The smaller the system the more unstable it is and the more expensive it is to produce a pound of fish. I'm a strong advocate of a well managed pond.

Either way they have to be fed.

Last bag of fish food I purchased was about $18. I was ready to put the pet catfish on a "diet". :rolleyes:

Between the cost of the fish and the feed, you will have fish, but maybe not at a low cost.

Thought of this too. Thus the reason for hanging a light to attract insects at night. Anything to offset the cost. But raising a steer or butcher pig isn't very economical either when you can buy it about as cheap at the grocers. But at least you know what your eating.

There's a lot of ways to keep the feed costs down with live stock,including fish as we have been discussing.If you have pasture it's a big help. I have neighbors that have to hire out cleaning their corn storage been. I get all I want free every year. Craigs list is full of people that want someone to deal with their hay fields on shares.One of my neighbors has a small square baler and bales on shares.Every piece of plant vegetation from my garden goes to my chicken. Goats would rather eat a small sapling than anything else.
You just have to be creative. Doing any or all these things is still well worth knowing the produce that's going into your families mouth!


Wade

Raising hybrid bluegill as a food source
 

A friend of mine did this... He was going to 'farm them' He stocked a 1/4 acre spring fed pond with hybrids. They grew pretty fast, and after a couple of years you could harvest 4-5" fish, but now you can catch pounders any time you wish.... he started adding 2-3 pounds 3-4 times a year of fat head minnows, as they are a true minnow, (@ 9-10$$ a pound-350-400 per pond) easy to buy, as they are regularly sold as fish fodder.... (give the minnows a stack of pallets and they'll reproduce well.... (and they are great crappie bait)
But the one thing he does do is feed every day.... he bought a deer feeder and it throws pellets once a day for 2-3 seconds.... not enough to be the only meal, just a good supplemental feeding...
One thing to remember is that no matter what they tell you they are not sterile and what you will end up with is straight run bluegill and green sunfish, and percentages thereof.... so this will require you to harvest the 1 to 3" fish after about the 4th or 5th year...... if you don't catfish, theres bound to be some flathead fishermen who'd gladly seine a portion of them out harvesting the straight runs especially, for bait... or feed em to a black bass pond etc...??? or add 2-4 black bass.... not too many though..
The point being is that if they are ignored without a predator they will overpopulate quickly...

Balanced ponds are the best way to manage a pond..... but farming a particular species is very do-able...

Build it as big and as deep as you have money. You never go wrong building bigger... fish are not livestock in the traditional sense. You don't put 100 fish in and get 100 out... a single cormorant can clean your pond out... add in snakes, turtles, trash fish, shore birds (herons) and you've got competition.

Leave as much structure as you can (places for fish to breed and hide)...

I'd say try and raise ten times what you need, and hope you get what you want... if you have extra, fish fry time, neighbor enrichment time, etc.

Build it big, so in case you have a drought, it doesn't dry up and blow away... My first pond building was great, but in a drought year, it withered to the size of an above ground swimming pool. I enlarged by 20x and deep enough (35') to last through 7 years of no rain whatsoever. Last couple of years I've lost as much as 5' of water... without losing any fish...