My Pond

[kbbgood]

I have a pond about 1 acre in size and have stocked it with about 150 channel cat, 100 bass and some bluegill and a lot of minnows to feed with. We also feed catfish food at times. Problem is we have no sigh that there is anything but turtles in the pond. We never catch anything but a few bluegill and this year not even that. What has happened to all the fish. Have the turtles been feeding on all the fish? We have tried to get rid of the turtles with no success. What do we do?

[Justin Spencer]

How deep is it, sounds like you may have had a fish kill.

[cpriest]

I have a similar sized pond, max depth 10-12ft and it turned over and killed 95% of the fish this summer. There were several others I spoke with that had the same thing happen around similar time back in June. Within 2 weeks all the predators had cleaned that place up so if your not out there often it's hard to know.

[Gavin]

Toss some pellets out see what comes to eat

[stlfisher]

How long ago did you stock it? It will take awhile to produce a decent fishery. You should stock Bass 1 year after stocking the other species....otherwise they may eat all the bluegill and minnows before those fish have a chance to spawn. Then you have little food left. The catfish if stocked larger may have had the same effect.

The MDC has great information on pond management and will stock fish for free I believe. The fish will be fingerlings etc, so you have to be patient, but that is the best way to produce a quality fishery long term.