Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Increasing forage in pond with existing bass

Adding forage to a bass pond is sometimes like adding chickens into a large pen with numerous foxes. For a more balanced fish community containing LMB where the population is skewed toward smaller bass, the wisest plan is to remove a significant number of the bass(foxes). When done correctly this allows more forage item to survive and thrive to annually produce forage for the predator population. Forage species can be supplemented with pellet feeding and improving the habitat, usually refuge areas to allow BG to survive long enough to grow to a decent size. Numerous conditions create too many bass and too few forage items. Generally you should have at lease 20-30 times more forage fish than predators. A good fish sampling program/method will show the ratio of predator to forage.