What type of fish would you put in your pond? Part of the dilemma is what do you really want the pond to produce and if the pond can handle the species you want to add to the pond. For most pond owners warm water fish like bass and blue gill are the usual pond fish. The reason for the two species is control, controlling each other from over taking the pond and end up with too many fish. In other words we need to have predator fish and bait fish.
But the fun part comes when it’s time to see how the fish are doing, let’s goes fishing and see how they are doing. How big are they getting? Do they look healthy, not skinny? When we first started out we only had the Koi, then added Hybrid Stripped Bass, Perch, Blue Gill and some Fathead minnows . This was in our larger pond and it averaged out to about 10 of each species except for the minnows was about two pounds worth.
Every year we enjoy feeding the fish and in the spring as they come out of the slowed down state they ready to feed but 
still a little slow. What I mean is in this slow state they all come up to feed and right along side each other of all the species nice and gentle. But a week later watch out the strippers come up and nail the food, the perch are not as fast but still more aggressive, the blue gill tend to get faster and the Koi are like large lumbering vacuum cleaners just munching away along the surface of the water. (Video Below)
It seems each year when the perch spawn we get about 3-4 four new perch and they feed away from the bigger fish and after they are a year or two old they don’t come up to feed. This is one reason I went fishing wanting to see how big the perch are getting and if we needed to pull a few out. After catching this one I think it’s time to pull a few out.
This all takes time watching and checking up on the fish, how are they doing, what needs to be done to increase their numbers or do they need to be thinned out a bit. Another part of the fish pond is habitat for the fish, a place to hide from the predators and the same place becomes an ambush area for the predators to feed. These habitat areas can be planted with aquatic plants or artificial structures. More on Pond fish habitats can be found on our fish habitat post.
