1/2 acre pond 10-12 years old. I bought the property 5 years ago. Fished a bit, never got so much as a nibble and got busy doing other stuff. This spring we were seeing bluegill in the shallows so we tried some bread on under a bobber. No takers do my son started tossing a top water just for fun. Next 30 minutes yielded a half dozen LMB. Being all excited and having no experience, I immediately put in 8 pounds of flathead minnows, 300 copper nose bluegills and 50 2” channel cats.

Obviously, probably not the best course of action but still catching the bass and seeing larger bluegills (haven’t really fished for them). Hopefully I haven’t thrown things out of whack too much. I would like to have a pond where I can regularly catch eating size bass and bluegill. We’ve been told that catfish aren’t likely to reproduce in a pond this size so we’ll keep a count on them once they get bigger and decide whether it’s a good idea to put more in at some point in the future.

Look forward to learning how to manage this pond for my goals.

Welcome to the forum

How big are the LMB that your son caught? Do some reading on here to learn how to tell what shape the LMB are in meaning are they stunted or young. There is lots to read then ask lots of questions

+1 on Pat's advice.

"Relative weight" in your search terms might get some applicable results for your reading list.

The bass have varied from 9-10” up to maybe 14-16”. Longer than from your elbow to fingertip on the bigger ones. We’ve been throwing the big ones back and have eaten some in the 12” range. Bluegills are spawning in all the shallows now, I suspect they were the ones already there but they seem small enough to possibly be some of the cnbg I put in a month or so ago.

If there is a tutorial somewhere on how to post pics, I can throw some on here.

Sorry for double post. That is one of the larger ones we’ve caught.

That first bass he caught looks awfully similar to the second one!