Starting a fish pond?

Question

I want to build a pond, about 150 feet long and 50 feet wide to raise catfish, bass, and crappie in. How deep should it be? How do I get water in it? Where do I get the fish? How long before I can start fishing in it? Thanks for the input!

Answer 1

you will probably need a backhoe in order to dig the whole yourself, I imagine if you dig it the rain will fill it in to some extent. it would be a lot of work. I had a pond about 10 foot by 5 foot and it was about 4 foot deep, but this was in Louisiana. The Fish we had in there did fine, lots of algae though, but catfish should be good for that.  

Answer 2

you need at least 10 feet deep. if you can dig by a spring if not you can haul water. have a well drilled. you can get fish from a fish hatchery

Answer 3

Check out the following site:www.aquahabitat.com/index.html

Answer 4

This is going to be way more expensive  (as in a few thousand) than digging a hole, you realize that, right?

But I'll attempt to answer your question.

At a very minimum, small fish need 4 feet to go down for winter time. Bigger ones probably 6-7 feet

Answer 5

when it gets cold out you want the pond to be 7 1/4 ft deep

Answer 6

Well make it as big as possible. Making it sallow on the edges, and deeper in the middle is good. Make sure to have structure for the fish. Old x-mas trees with a old tire around it to weigh it down, old stove with door taken off, or what ever idea you can think of. To get water in it You can do some different things. If you have a small creek. You can dig a small channel to the pod so water runs into it. Make sure to have some Type of mesh such as hard wire cloth over the creek channel to keep fish from getting out. You can go fishing for the type of fish you want in your pond, and then transport them in a bucket with a one of those battery powered air pump w/ air stone.[ at walmart, kmart,d**k, and other stores.] Then put them in. Make sure the fish you stock it with is legal size. LIke bass 12 inchs. You could also use yellowbook.com to find a fish hachery to stock the pond. I tried it for my area, and found a stocker. You also have to have a population of minnows, crayfish, and panfish to feed the fish you want to stock. You can get those through the hachery also. You really can start fishing it as soon as they can get on the hook. You should also look at get a pond aeration system. It will allow you to have more fish safely, Some thing like this,http://cgi.ebay.com/BIG-MAX-Fish-Pond-La... or maby smaller is good. They even can be solar powered so you don't pay any runing cost. That's about it. Good luck, and have fun.

p.s. Here's the place i found to get fish. It's in western ny.

http://www.fingerlakesaquaculture.com.