Establishing fathead minnows in ponds - seeking advice

[LA CrappieMaster]

Hello everyone,
I am reaching out for some advice on stocking a couple of ponds on my property with fathead minnows and possibly crawfish. I would appreciate any guidance or resources you can share.
I have two ponds:
1. **Pond 1**: This is a newly built pond in my backyard, with a surface area of ½ acre and an average depth of 5 feet, reaching up to 8 feet at its deepest point. It currently holds about 4 feet of water. My goal is for the kids in the family to have fun catching fish and maybe occasionally fry a few. Unless it’s illegal, I plan to stock it with small bream and crappie that I catch locally, even though I know crappie are usually not recommended.
2. **Pond 2**: This pond is ¾ acre in size with an average depth of 3-4 feet and has been around for about 30 years. My granddaddy used to stock it with channel catfish around 25 years ago, and it hasn’t been touched since. Last year, I acquired the property and tried fishing it, catching one 2” longear sunfish and several 3-4” bullheads (or mudcats). Two years ago, I added 50-60 3-4” bream. I’d like to move the bream to Pond 1 and establish minnows and crawfish in this pond for bait and occasional crawfish boils if possible.

[Rojo]

Can't say I've ever heard of combining Crawfish with Fatheads or Tuffys but I have studied Small Impoundment Design quite a bit back when I was designing backyard fish ponds. You add your Tuffys in April here so I would say May in Winnsboro. You don't put anything else in the pond till July to give the Tuffys time to spawn and get established. Also the same floating fish food works with Tuffys. I would consider seining the pond several times to clean and predator (includes Bream) feeders are gone. Generally Hatcheries have their brood stock lay on mats that are then removed from the Brood pond and Hatched in a clean pond, nothing but misquotes in the water. Insects in the water are the worst predator to a minnow till they get large enough to turn the tables.

Here is a article I did all the leg work on, interviews, etc for Keith. We work together on stuff. This was a article I was going to write here on CDC till I pitched it to Keith to see if he wanted to do it first.

From Hatchery to Hook, by Keith Lusher | CrappieNOW

[LA CrappieMaster]

Thanks Rojo. I would love to seine it (actually did that type of work in high school) but struggling to find a reasonably priced way of doing it. I actually thought about pumping it out, but decided against it since it doesn't accumulate water by drainage and I would have to wait for a lot of rain. I will try to heavily fish it, because I would like to move the fish to the pond closer to my house anyways. Figured worse case I'm out of $100-$150 worth of baitfish. I work out of town and was just notified that one of my family members helped by adding a few bass