Pond fish - hybrid striped bass?

[Jeanne - Simme Valley]

Anyone stock their pond with hybrid striped bass?? I was looking over the list of fisheries, and one of them has hybrids for sale.
We would like to put small mouth & large mouth, along with crappie, and fat head minnows (for food). Have to find out if the smallies can live in our pond.
Anyone have any experience with these?

 

[A6gal]

Danbury Fish Farms in Texas sells stock fish. I think it is one of the largest fish farms in the US. They've put a few hybrid bass in my tank for me. They also have stripers, crappies, shad, minnows, catfish, just about any fresh water fish you'd want. My son is working there this summer before he leaves for the airforce in late September. They have a website, you could do a web search to find them.

I posted this, then realized you're in New York! I guess, that would be a little too far from where you are.

 

[Arnold Ziffle]

Can't help you on the stripers, but will offer a comment about crappies, FWIW. The Texas fisheries folks always urge pond/lake owners not to stock crappie unless they have quite a bit of water (I think it is 5 acre minimum) and the owner is confident of being able to put on adequate fishing pressure, due to the fact that crappies are so prolific. But possibly up in your country, with much colder water, etc. the same guidance concerning crappies might not apply.

 

[Jeanne - Simme Valley]

I, of course, will culsult with the fishery that will supply us. I know large mouth can over-populate a pond quickly. Every site I checked for stocking a pond, recommends putting blue-gills/sunfish with bass for food for the growing bass. Than they say, you have to harvest 15-1 (15 sunfish for 1 bass). I would much rather feed them with fat head minnows.
Worked great with out other little (.25 acre) pond that we're raising channel cats. They multiplied like crazy, you could put a minnow bucket in the water for 5 minutes, and it would be black with minnows -UNTIL - the cats got about 4# - minnows are GONE. We have cats about 7+# now.
Oh yeah, I also plan on putting in crawdads (crawfish). We put them in out little pond - Ken & I went to the creek and caught a bunch. They are surviving, because we find them in the cats bellies every now & then. We feed the cats fish food.

 

[Scotty]

They will clean out all the small fish. Grow fast and taste bad. My opinion only of course.


Scotty

 

[Jeanne - Simme Valley]

Thanks Scotty. I spoke to the fisherie and he said our climate is not good for the hybrid stripers & hybrid large mouth. Said they are ferocious eaters & we don't have a long enough growing season for their eating needs - so it makes them hard to survivie.
Said small mouth/crappie will do well in our pond - suggestied adding tractor bucket loads of rock/gravel piles in pond for smallies. Also said tractor tires are great structure for the pond. So we spend the weekend seeding & rolling the edges & adding structure - large boulders, buckets of rocks & tires.

 

[rgv]

You should check out a website called Pond Boss. They have a caht site that would be quite helpful.

 

[Jeanne - Simme Valley]

rgv - great site - I could spend days looking up info in the quorum. Also, it's set up very much like this one, so easy to maneuver (sp?).
Tires are deffinately good structure - but, they say you have to drill holes in them & weigh them down. Now, I can't for the life of me believe a tractor tire will float :shock: I'll have to do more checking. But, thanks for the site.