Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking Crowded LMB growth

In regards to the LMB stunting. If you pull the larger LMB from the pond, will each generation not have the potential to reach the size of the one before. I am not talking about reaching trophy sizes. For example: if you want LMB to be a max size of 15" and cull all those, will it be hard to get later generations up to that 15" size? My thinking here is cull those top end ones constantly to give some table fare, let the next generation fill that culled gap, but to keep them crowded enough to control the BG. Is this too much of a tightrope?

Balancing on a knife edge between 2 unstable states is more like it. Cull the ones in the class size that exhibits poor growth.

Like ewest said, a knife edge. The biggest limiting factor on if they'll grow to the 15" size is having enough food at the 14" size.

Don't know how to really ask this question in the right way, but I will keep trying.

So, more food for the 14" bass to take the place of the 15". If I am thinking correctly then, that means thinning out some of the 13-14" bass with the 15". Ultimately I can't solely cull the top end of the LMB, that would hurt the fishery even in a stunted scenario. I need to remove some smaller ones with them?


SPARKPLUG- a question here if you see this. In your HBG ponds that are producing such nice trophy size HBG, do you have alot of overcrowded bass and what is the max size of those?

I hope this information helps.

A skinny or even average 13 inch bass will never grow to 14 or 15 inches. That 13 inch bass must first become an overweight 13 inch bass before it will add any length. If you are keeping catch record data and you notice that your 10-11 inch bass seem to have heads to big for their bodies most likely your food chain that is appropriate for that size bass is over stressed and removing 15 inch bass will basically be removing the only 15 inch bass you will ever have until your food chain problem is corrected for the bass at the 10-11 inch range. Also removing the bass at the 15 inch range will allow the bait fish that would normally be eaten by that specific size bass to continue to grow and pack on the pounds. This will also have a negative impact because your pond can only support so many lbs of fish whether that is 100 1 lb blue gill or 1000 .1 lb bluegill.

I think the point everyone else was trying to make is that the path to take with the least amount of complication is to remove and eat the bass that seem to be the skinniest. This doesn't mean don't remove any 15 inch bass just do so sparingly. Of course if your 15 inch bass population just so happens to be the ones struggling to put on anymore weight then eat away. However eventually the size bass you need to cull will eventually change in an effort to keep everything balanced.