Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Trophy LMB pond versus catch rate

Greg,
It's definitely not fishing pressure, at least not this year.

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Here a time line of the pond:

11/2005
Bought property

2006 Catch rates were high but Wr for LMB was low. We had only 3 species of fish in the pond, LMB, GSF and Bullheads. Throw out a line and a skinny LMB or a nice GSF (not unusual to catch 10-11 inch GSF) would attack the line. We tried to manually remove Elodea and it was a disaster. Sure we removed a lot of Elodea on a short term basis but we caused it to spread like wildfire.

03/2007
Stocked BG and a few adult RES (I believe it was 18 RES).

2007 (The remainder of the year) We didn't visit the property much, that was the year that Ricki had her neck surgery due to the auto accident. We visited in late May or early June and the pond was teeming with fish. Unfortunately the Elodea on the pond was out of control, probably 80% coverage. Between June and November we did not visit the pond. When we went in November fishing on the pond was dead. In addition we didn't see fish anywhere. This is the year that I believe that we had a major fish kill. I speculate that when the Elodea died back (which it does at our place in the winter) that it caused an oxygen crash and took out a bunch of fish.

2008
A year where we visited the pond a bunch. Once per week from April through December with the exception of I think November. Fishing was lousy in terms of number of fish caught for the entire year. In August of 2008 is when I caught my 4 pound bass. We had never seen any fish anywhere near that big prior to this catch. We treated the Elodea with Reward/Cutrine and really knocked it back. We saw tons of YOY fish in 2008, small bass, unfortunately clouds of bullhead. Ricki caught a juvenile RES and we caught a few mid sized BG.

2009
Well you all know the story. We've only been to the pond twice. We did see a lot of fry this year during the April visit. Fishing was lousy for both the April and the June visit this year. When we were there in June we spot treated two areas of the pond for Elodea and American Pond Weed but the weed situation was much better than in past years. We're heading back up there for 3 weeks or so in December. Hopefully 2010 will be another year of once per week visits after tax season. There were tons of YOY bass in the pond in June of this year, in fact they would nip at you when floating in the pond. We also saw congregations of YOY BG.

The pond was fished daily for one week a month in 2006 and 2008. Very little fishing occurred in 2007 and this year.

When we were there this June I fully expected the fishing to be fantastic (It was in 2006 during the summer months). This year's June fishing was a complete dud.

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So I don't think it is a function of fishing pressure. Of course our fishing skill (or more to the point lack there of) could be called into question but we certainly had high catch rates in 2006.

So it sounds like I need to pull out bass. Should I remove any and every bass that I catch?

The pond is fairly clear. I need to get a secchi disk but I can tell you just from visual observation that for most of the year the pond is clear. Although DIED commented more than once that it appeared that we had a good algae bloom going on so what do I know. I had never considered fertilizing in the past because of the Elodea problem. It seems we have the Elodea much more under control now.

My good friend DIED visited the pond last weekend and he told me that the pond looked great, the weeds are in check, he didn't have time to fish and didn't see any fish swirling about the surface. He also said that there we no signs of anyone having been around the pond. We had been having problems with that in the past but we now have 100% of the property line fenced and have installed "No Trespassing, No Hunting, No Fishing" signs all along our 30 acres of fence line and along every road and path to the pond. It is impossible to approach our pond without seeing a sign.

So it sounds like remove LMB and perhaps fertilize.

The main issue that I have we a feeder is that at most we are only at the property once per month and for tax season we don't get there for three months. I'm not afraid of the feeder being stolen (heck if people wanted to steal stuff there are a lot more valuable things to steal than a fish feeder) it's more a function of the feeder not being refilled for weeks at a time.