I own a ranch west of Denton and have 7 ponds on it. All are small- 1 to 3 acres in size. I want to stock bass in at least the two deepest. Both of these are creek and/or spring fed and 8-12' deep.

Problem (or maybe not) is that I have tons of small/medium sized green sunfish. You can catch 50 of them if you want on a swimbait or even a small buzz bait. If i stock bass fingerlings I could see them being all ate. If I stock bass that are 1lb in size (if i can even buy such a thing) they'd have a field day and fatten up quick.

Any suggestions? I am about 30 minutes from Graham.

Edit- I only have sunfish/brim in the ponds (no catfish).

Get to fishing and transport them but be quiet about it.

I'd put some other sunfish in there too besides green sunfish. The ponds around me that only have bass and greenies do not do as well for the bass as ones with other sunfish species. One reason is the greens have big mouths so they eat way more of the bass fry so getting the population up and going is much slower. Far easier to remove/cull out fish to prevent stunting than it is to have a slow growing population. Add some crayfish too if you're not sure if there are any in there.

Eric

Also remember that 1 acre of pond will support about 600 pounds of fish mass (all fish including minnows) so don't be afraid of the smaller ponds either. About 400 pound of sunfish/200 pounds of bass.

Eric

I would consider buying advanced fingerling (6" to 8") in the fall. These will be big enough that the green sunfish will not be able to eat them. Adding small Red Ear or Coppernose would likely give your food chain some much need diversity if your goal is to grow bass. Might want to have a different objective for each pond. Leave one as a green sunfish pond, introduce channel cat for another, have bass in another. You get the idea.

600 lbs is aggressive and hard to obtain unless you have very fertile water. My experience is that most ponds only hold 300 to 400 lbs of fish mass and I would love to see only 50-100 lbs of bass with the rest in forage. But, as you know the bass can easily gain control making the 50/50 ratio all too true.