re: Baw worried about his pond fish

my pond has frozen over about halfway before, did not notice any dead fish

From what I’ve seen there’s a big difference depending on what kind of sac-a-lait. Blacks seems to self regulate population whereas the whites will overrun and you end up with a pond of potato chips.

Some idiot stocked crappie (black) in our neighborhood pond and it is now overrun and the bass are all stunted and the crappie are starting to stunt too. The bluegill are still big though. I plan to take a couple hundred out this year but I'm just one man. It won't be long before this pond has to be started over too.

Funfact about crappie- they can actually survive as filter feeders on plankton. So when everything else in the pond is starting to die off due to a lack of forage, the crappie can still maintain a population by plankton feeding.