What kind of a pond are you going for? It makes a difference knowing your plan as to offer suggestions.
Here's what I did at my dad's pond, all hands on and no scientific work at all...except for knowing that fish eat other fish.
My dads pond sat idle, after construction, for 3 years. In the fourth year during the summer, in a selfish move to secure some unknown ice-fishing hot spot a buddy and myself stocked (from a neighboring pond that is severely stunted) 7 large mouth bass (around 12 inches), ten hand sized bluegills, and 12 8-10inch white crappies. A year or so later I dumped in five 1-2lbs channel cats from the river that i didn't want to keep.
Ten years later, the bass have thrived, the blue-gills and crappies are gone and the catfish that remain are over 10lbs. The bass are complete cannibals and a person would be hard pressed to tell me my dad's pond doesn't explain darwinism to a T. The frogs usually try their luck in the spring, and acutally did quite well this year due to the flood. Usually they are consumed quite quickly.
One summer I would catch very small green sunnies (thumb sized) and ended up putting around 50 or so of them in there every two weeks or so. I knew they wouldn't last long and felt obligated to feed the bass.
End of August to September is an awesome time to catch loads of large bass. i haven't tried for a few years, but I'm waiting so that when i do...I'll nab two or three 10lbs plus.
