What are best baits for pond fishing?

Ponds under an acre are incredibly difficult to manage. Ponds with crappie are also extremely difficult to manage. I’d damn near drain it and start from scratch.

My advice, give it time

Making real improvements is a three year process.

Get some turtle traps. You wont get them all but you need to keep them thin.

Beetle spin

Not even close if you are trying to catch numbers quickly . You can catch more pond fish all species on that then anything. And you can fish it fast

As others have said, the sac a lait and green sunfish gotta go.
In actuality, draining it and starting over with bream, shad, and fathead minnows. Then a few bass. 0.5 acre is small and there’s no room for catfish, sac a lait, and green sunfish if you want some decent size bass.

If you want the fish to eat, seine it first, then rotenone it to kill anything left. Trap or shoot as many turtles as possible. They don’t really hurt a pond but are more symptomatic of a pond with issues that you outlined.

Hopefully you used ag (pulverized) lime and spread it uniformly over the entire bottom of the pond. Your alkalinity should be over 20ppm. Get some pond fertilizer (high phosphorus, low nitrogen), powdered (not granular) is easiest to apply but liquid is fine. If you can get a plankton bloom, that should help prevent sunlight penetration which is the reason for the vegetation and algae.

If any filamentous algae or an undue amount of vegetation persists after a bloom is achieved, spray with appropriate pond herbicide.

Note that catfish will usually keep the pond turbid/muddy. Many people prefer a bass/bream pond. Bream and other forage fish (fatheads and threadfin shad) can be stocked in late fall or early winter, and bass stocked the following June. Avoid crappie.

Have the same size pond. Worms are good for perch (and sometimes the small bass). For strictly bass, throw a spinner bait or any bass bait for that matter.

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If Bass is what you meant by small pond bait..... I still believe the purple fire tail basic worm will seine a small pond of bass in short work

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plastic worms texas rigged (weedless of course) would be a good starting point, especially if there lots of algae.

Black and Yellow H&H

Catalpa worm colored 1/8 oz beetle spin on an ultralight spinning reel. Fun times await!

A half acre pond with sacalait? You're cooked baw