Hi, everyone. I've been looking at this site off and on for a few weeks and found tons of good information.

I have a pond I've been trying to evaluate and hopefully can improve. I was hoping to start a thread on here with pictures, fishing results, and of course questions.

The two biggest problems so far are coontail, and too many small bluegill.

Welcome! You have come to the right place for help with achieving your goals. I am not an expert on anything, but the smart people will be right over with all the questions for you

CMM

Thanks for the welcome. The aquashade seems to be working okay on the coontails (atleast compared to previous years) and I think I'm going to go with adding more LMB to thin out the bluegill population. Hopefully I'll get some time to come up with questions and take some pictures soon!

How about some pictures? We love photos.

How old is the pond? Consider doing a simple fishing survey. Record the species, length and weight of the fish you catch over a few fishing sessions and it will really help you figure out what you need to do with fish management. If the pond hasn't been harvested at all, from what I've read I don't think adding LMB will be the right answer.

Welcome, Instructor!

I'm not an expert either but I'll chime in on what will be helpful in getting some answers to many of your pond/fishery questions. Just to name a few, so don't hold back on giving these folks as much info as possible:

*Size of pond
*Age of pond
*Depth of pond
*Your pond and fishery goals

Otherwise there's one answer to fit nearly all questions;

"It depends"

Keith

I'll try to get some pictures soon. I see plenty of bass when walking around the lake but they have been hard to catch.

It's about 5 acres and average depth is probably 4-6' but there are a couple areas up to about 12'.

We have large mouth bass, bluegill, blue cats, grass carp and some crappie (I've never caught many crappie there but they are there). We just stocked 200 channel cats, 50 bass and 150 crappie, all were 4-6".

It's a little difficult to fish there because of the shallow water mixed with weeds. If you are fishing for bluegill though, you can catch a dozen within a few minutes but almost all of them will be 5-6".

We do not allow anyone to take bass from march-june. I don't think very many people keep anything from there, but a few of us do here and there.

The lake is at a Consevation Club and has been there for over 40 years (man made). Fed by a small creek and has an overflow pipe on the opposite end.

I would like to see it with a little less weeds, the bluegill a little bigger, more catfish and maybe more bass (or easier to catch).

We also have an aerator and have started feeding pellets since we stocked last time. We have about 4-6 nice blue cats that are probably over 10 lbs each and an albino channel cat about the same size but so far none of the other fish have been coming to the pellets, well except the bluegill.

The bass seem to be reproducing well enough, it hasn't been stocked in probably 10 years and there are some big ones in there as well as all different sizes. There are some monster bluegill too, but catching one is rare because of the number or small ones that come to your bait as soon as it hits the water.

I should also add there are brown bullheads, bullfrogs, snapping turtles, sliders, and snakes.

The bullhead are easy to catch at night with liver.

I've seen people catch LMB up to 5 or 6 ponds on artificial lures. I get bored easily with artificial bait so I normally fish with live bait. I've caught most of my bass there on small bluegill.

One day a couple years ago towards the end of the summer I caught about 12 large crappie within an hour or so on something similar to a rooster tail. Since then I've never caught more than a couple in one day.

We have an annual hog roast with a kids fishing tournament that I've done for the last 4 years or so, another coming up June 9th. We normally have 25-30 kids from 2pm-3pm. They normally catch about 200 fish in that hour and first place has been around 30-40 fish before. These are all kids 12 and under and the size of the fish is almost all like the little ones I mentioned above.

Is it possible the population of predators is okay versus bluegill and they are just being kept safe hiding in the coontail?

I'm also wondering if the fish are hard to catch because of the bluegill population. Maybe they are just eating them and therefore not hungry.

ETA: What about the crappie? I've been reading they are somewhat of a nuisance here but we don't hardly catch any in this pond/lake.

It's really hard to tell what's going on without a creel survey. Just go fishing, and record length, weight, and species of every fish. Then look up the relative weight (percentage of ideal weight) for each fish caught. That will really help tell us what's going on.

At this time I'd hold off on adding more LMB. It is a good possibility that there are too many places for the little BG to hide from the LMB. I agree with the creel survey. Lengths, weights (weighed, not estimated) and species of fish. Usually you don't want cover for the fish to hide in to be more than 20% of the surface area of a pond.

Hi everyone. I just joined this forum as I've been looking for info on starting a new fish pond for fishing only. My question is it possible to have some smb and bg in a 50' x 50' pond 10' deep? My wife and I had to move from a lake to the country and both like to fish but the plot of land I have won't be able to provide us with a larger pond. Might be able to go 60 x 60' at the most. Thanks Bart

In a small pond it would be easier to go with fish that are more of a put and take fishery like Hybrid Bluegills and Hybrid Striped Bass.

Welcome to the forum!

We had our kids fishing tournament today. 14 kids entered, and they caught 108 bluegill in 1 hour. I set up plastic totes with pond water for the kids to throw the fish in and they were taken to a local garden afterwards for fertilizer. We told the kids (all under 12) that the fish would be "released" later to avoid tears and objections.

Out of the 108 fish caught, probably 5 were keepers and were released. 90% or so of the ones removed were under 6".

I doubt this even put a dent in our bluegill population.

As far as the survey mentioned, it's hard to give any good info when all you catch are bluegill and weeds, but I will try to get some pictures soon.

You caught 108 BG and 0 bass? Hmm... That is a problem

Yes, that is a problem. Actually one bass was caught that was about 5" and other than that the rest were bluegill.

I think I may have to just pay someone to come out and evaluate the pond.

Put a hook through a 3 inch bluegill with no cork and no weight. You might be surprised.

here are a few pictures from the other day.

Nice pics. I will be astonished if there aren't a ton of LMB in there. What are you fishing with?

There are a ton of them, they're just hard to catch. That one was caught with a tiny piece of night crawler while fishing for bluegill. I actually caught it but my daughter wanted her picture taken with it.

I've tried everything but I've had my best luck while using minnows or small bluegill. Rubber worms seem to be a favorite by a bunch that fish out there but I haven't had much luck using them.

I just rephrase that. I THINK there are a ton of them. Right now they are spawning and if you walk slowly along the bank you will see one about every 30-40' where the water is clear.

If the fish see relatively heavy fishing pressure, there's not much that they will bite on besides live bait. Especially the lures that they see thrown at them frequently.

That's something I hadn't considered, so thank you. I wouldn't really call it heavy fishing pressure, but maybe enough people throwing lures at the same fish to scare them off of those.

I'm going to spend a whole day soon with a bucket of minnows and small bluegill and try to catch as many bass as possible and weigh/measure them. I'll post the results here. The one my daughter is holding was around 15" but I did not get a weight.

Any ideas from anyone about the bluegill for now? Should I try to thin them out a bit or just leave them alone until I figure some other things out?

A bigger bass photo caught the same day as the kids fishing tournament by our Vice President.

Until the weights/lengths are in, I'd leave the BG alone.

I've been doing more research over the last week or so and have been at the pond daily. Nothing real interesting going on to report except for a large (probably over 20 lbs) grass carp dead. I added a second aerator line and stone to our existing windmill. Who knows why it died, but we've had the air stone for awhile and it's getting pretty hot so I decided to get it taken care of.

I think we're getting a game plan together for the coontail. It's going to cost about $3,000 next spring to treat the 5 acres with whitecap and 8 gallons of aquashade but I think that may get rid of the weeds, hopefully allowing the bass to get the bluegill back under control.

For now I am taking esshup's advice and leaving the bluegill alone.

When feeding the last week or so, nothing has really been coming in except the bluegill, and they come in by the hundreds. You can spot a couple decent ones here and there but most are about 3-4". Every now and then a large bass will sneak in and ambush a bluegill, which is pretty neat to watch.

I'm going to get a bucket of minnows and go fishing for a day this weekend and I'll post weights and lengths of any of the bass and large bluegill I catch, and pictures.

I'm sure you all know this but this is an awesome site for information! I've learned a ton just browsing through some of the different threads here.

I've been thinking about this a lot and I think I might be understanding the big picture here a little better now.

I still need to go out and do some serious fishing and record all the lengths and weights and take pictures. Hopefully I can get to that this weekend.

Regardless of how we end up treating the weeds, would it hurt to stock some more LMB and CC this year? I'd like to pick up 250 LMB and another 300 CC. From the way the numbers of small bluegill look, all the new fish should all have plenty of food, right?

Just judging from many hours of unsuccessful catfishing and feeding the fish for the last 2 months, I don't think there are many catfish except the 200 4-6" ones (CC) we stocked this year, a couple large albinos and maybe a half a dozen large blue cats (and the bullheads).

I think the bass are plentiful but there are just a ton of small bluegill. I'm thinking 250 in 5 acres shouldn't hurt since we can always remove some if we find there are too many.

These are honestly all just guesses and observations. Any help or advice would be appreciated!

You really need a lot of data points from fishing to evaluate the pond. Until then you're really just stumbling in the dark. If you still can't catch anything, consider an electrofishing survey.

I know, I've been slackin'. Work has kept me pretty busy but I'm trying to get back into the project.

I picked up a small pelican bass boat for cruising around the pond and tonight my 5 year old daughter and I tried it out. We both had a blast. This was pretty much just a test run for the boat but I did end up catching a nice crappie, which we don't see too often in there.

Luckily I had both a camera and several witnesses because there's a few that don't think we have any crappie in there at all. This was was just over 14" but I did not get a weight. He was photographed and released.

Dude, I dont know what youre complaining about. haha You have a beautiful, clear pond, loaded with healthy fish. I wish my pond looked that good.

Hi all, I came to learn about ponds, looks like I'm in the right place. Steve.

Welcome!