Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Small Bream on One Acre Pond

In South Louisiana. Stocked my 1 acre fertilized pond in January 2017 with 1,000 bream, 100 catfish, and 100 bass. My bream are mostly around 5 inches and I haven't seen one bigger than that. The bass are 6-10 inches. The catfish are around 12-15 inches.

Should I be taking bream out already even if they aren't eating size? Or should I wait? If so, how much should I remove?

That is a pretty heavy stocking rate for one acre. They may be short on food. Lack of food will slow growth.

I will let the experts make recomendations, but usually you leave the original stockers in and harvest the offspring. But with that high stocking rate, you may have to either increase the food available (supplemental feeding) or reduce fish numbers.

Welcome to the forum.

Appreciate the feedback bud. Looking forward to hearing more.

Agree with John. I believe I would have waited a year before stocking predators. The bream are the backbone of the pond and get clobbered pretty quickly. You have a standard Southern pond that is predator heavy andforage light. It’s kinda like having too many cows in the pasture.

I would do a couple of things. Add about ten pounds of fathead minnows to take pressure off the bream. The bream will also eat them. Second is to start pulling bass. Those guys are spawning and eating machines and are going to stunt. Fish need to eat ten pounds of forage to gain one pound. That forage has to be 1/4 to 1/3 their size.

BTW, a lot of us, including me, have made that mistake. I generally tell new pond owners to stock bass when they can go to sleep with their mouth open and wake up with a full belly.

I would not remove any brim because of the size of your lmb. I would reduce the numbers of lmb that fall below the relative weight chart for their length. I am no expert that is for sure but I think you can have around 100 lbs of predators per acre in a normal southern pond. That is 100 1 lb fish or 50 2 lb fish.

If wanting that many LMB, I would suggest adding 1000 4-5" BG and removing 50-75 CC. If not wanting to stock more, take out about 50 LMB and again, 50-75 CC.

arhodes79, welcome to Pondboss.
You are getting the info you need in these three posts to have a successful pond.

What are your goals for the fishery? Management can be quite different for producing large bass vs. large bluegills. And, the catfish can get in the way or contribute positively to reaching goals, whatever the goals may be.

Really appreciate the advice. So should I be worried at this point or might the bream still grow, now that we’re entering warmer months?

Are you feeding the fish ? If not at your location you will need to remove predators or add adult CNBG - depending on goals. Your CNBG should be 7-9 inches by the start of year 2. Sounds like they need more food. can you post pics of a few ?

Here is a 1 yr old CNBG with feeding.