A few basic points:
CAW25: I am not an amateur who comes on here to learn the basics, and then decides to throw around advice. If you take me as that, you are very mistaken. I currently manage several ponds professionally, and I have ten years of experience doing so, so my knowledge is not theory, it's firsthand, proven experience. I don't recommend anything unless I know it works. If you have experience managing ponds professionally that eclipses mine, by all means continue discounting my scientifically-proven, widely-accepted and recommended advice.
Regarding the pretty silly idea that game and fish agencies assume pond owners are not going to take an active role in managing their ponds: maybe your state DNR is that haphazard, but mine certainly isn't. All of TWRA's recommendations - which were one of my first sources of information on managing ponds - are based on pond owners who take a very active, sustained role in the management of their ponds, in everything from pH to fertility to pond construction to regular harvesting. I would go way out on a limb here and suggest that there are many other state game and fish agencies in addition to TN's that are actually staffed by degreed fisheries biologists who have a great deal of both academic and real-world, field experience behind their recommendations, and further that they make said recommendations not as a shoddy compromise from the ideal pond, but rather in an earnest - and very informed - effort to help pond owners achieve the best fishing possible in their ponds. Furthermore, I stated not only that I had never heard a state agency make the recommendation to wait a year from the time of stocking bluegill to the time of stocking bass, but I've never heard a fisheries biologist or professional pond manager make that recommendation either, and so far, since I posted, none on this forum have spoken up and said they would recommend it. That should tell you something.
Lastly, and I would think this would have been the most obvious of all but perhaps it is not, my recommendation was based on actually listening to cougar's specific goals, which obviously none of you have done. He clearly stated very early in this thread, when asked which species was his priority, that he would like to have nice-sized members of both. It's very dubious, and completely unproven scientifically, whether any benefit derives to a pond managed solely for trophy bass when said pond is stocked with bass a year after forage is stocked, for the reasons I already delineated and won't do again; it's clearly and scientifically, empirically demonstrable that waiting a year from the time of stocking bluegill (which are bass forage) to the time of stocking bass, in the South, will yield exactly the opposite results from what cougar is seeking. My observations are not "anecdotal," they are scientifically proven and I only cited specific examples in a (wasted) attempt to educate. The half-acre pond I cited has had a large number of bluegill removed just this year, many of them by me; the pond that I mentioned that used to have big bluegill, has had several bluegill harvested in years past, though when the bluegill were at their biggest the pond had not been fished in some time. Here again, though, having personally corrected several ponds that at some point were overrun with tiny bluegill, I think I'm safe in saying that the other posters to this thread really know not of what they speak. It's not a situation that is remedied overnight, which is why many biologists recommend Rotenone in such a situation. I was merely trying to point out the tremendous stupidity that would inhere in cougar having to face that situation because he got bad advice on the forum he went to seeking expert advice. And it's more than a little frustrating to have significant professional experience, and offer scientifically-proven, sound, widely-recommended advice, and have it discounted by posters who have little to no experience.
Don't take this the wrong way, CJ, as I have nothing against you personally. But two years of experience working with ponds is almost equivalent to none; you haven't had time yet to really see the long-term effects of any management strategy you may have employed to this point. You may have some great ponds; they didn't get that way in two years.
