Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Where'd all the good LMB go?

Howdy! I'm new here, referred from Tractorbynet. I've read several threads looking for some answers. I don't want to re-hash old problems, but everyone's pond and situation are kind of unique.

I have two goals here, ultimately I want to build and stock my own pond, but more short term I want to figure out what happened to my papaw's pond, correct it, and not make the same mistakes when I get mine built and ready to stock. The farms are only about 2.5 miles apart so I assume they will have similar conditions. By the way, we're talking central KY, moderate climate which means too cold in the winter too hot in the summer.

OK, his pond is about 1.5 acres, maybe 15 feet deep in the center, average 6 - 10 feet with some good shallows. It is wet weather stream fed so it seems to have plenty of fresh water coming in. Probably close to 30 years old now. Started out with LMB, Crappie, and some Chanel cats here and there. About 20 years ago we introduced bluegill and the bass population went nuts. We started catching lots of really nice sized bass, > 2 lbs, as much as 7 lbs. (Once) The pond was not fished all the time, mostly when the family would get together, so maybe a couple times a month in the spring - fall. Then all of a sudden, a few years ago like someone turned off the "big LMB" switch, all we could catch were small ones. Maybe 10 - 12 inches, way under a lb and it's been that way ever since. We routinely take out as many bluegills as we can, we don't seem to catch any cats any more. We catch a few decent crappie here and there, but it doesn't seem to be overrun. There are a ton of bluegill, and a ton of smaller LMB. You can catch them any time, but none of them get bigger. We tried a few years of a heavy "nothing goes back in" fishing strategy. Broke my heart to toss a small LMB on the bank, didn't care to do that with the bluegill, but it didn't seem to help. We've tried a few years of catch and release on the small ones, still eating anything big enough to get the filet knife dirty. There are a couple of grass carp in there.

Any ideas what shut down the LMB growth down? Is there any other info that would help? I've seen discussions of overcrowding, and crappie taking over. Is there an inexpensive way to determine this?

Thanks.

Hi Spiveyman. Welcome to Pond Boss. I'm stilling learning about managing fish so I won't comment specifically on your situation. The forum has run into some speed issues, so it might take a little extra patience to get your questions answered. If you can hang in there you will get tons of great advice from the PB members.

I might see you over at Tractorbynet soon as my girlfriend wants a tractor and I'm trying to help her choose one.

Spiveyman, as GW said, welcome to the forum, and please be patient while Pond Boss works our some issues with the new forum format & server.

From what you've written, I would intially say that you have a classic case of overcrowded of LMB with not enough for them to eat.

The Black Crappie (or even White Crappie) do not help the situation as they eat the same things that LMB eat, therefore, there's more competition for the same meal.

For LMB, the first and foremost forgage for them is bluegill. Accordingly, if you want big (or bigger) bass, then you don't really want to remove any bluegill.

A basic plan would be to remove every LMB that you catch per a certain size limit. For example, you might want to remove every LMB under 15". This all depends on your goals and the current LMB population's conditions.

Until you get a grip on things, you might want to remove any Black Crappie that you catch.

One more comment: The bulk of your adult bluegill can (or may have) become too large for stunted LMB to eat. Thus, whenever the bluegill spawn, all the small bluegill are quickly eaten by the starving LMB; BUT, it does not really allow the LMB to grow enough to start eating the next size class of bluegill.

Welcome to PB. Can you tell us exactly what you see as to the different sizes of BG and the numbers? Same question as to LMB including any new hatched fish? What has the recent practice been as to removing fish (last 5 years)including how many ? A seine survey may be the next step.

Howdy, and thanks for the replies so far. I wasn't sure if this post made it, I got an error message when I submitted it. I did have some problems browsing as well, which is why I decided to start my own thread rather than try to sort out the info I was looking for. No probs though, I understand about "progress" when upgrading like that.

DW - Definitely check out TBN before buying, there are tons of tractor nuts over there who can give you great advice.

Sunil - Overcrowding, huh? That was our initial thoughts as well. Thinking back over the last 10 years or so... we used to catch some great LMB out there, but when my uncle moved out, then he and my dad both bought bass boats (so they fished the lakes) and I went to college there was a whole lot less fishing out there. That's about the time the fishing went south at this pond which didn't encourage us to fish there. It gets boring catching nothing but little bass all the time. I don't think I've caught anything over 12 - 13" in years, and over the last 2 years we've caught a lot more crappie. This all sounds like evidence of overcrowding. We were pretty good for a couple of years at never throwing anything back, but it just might not have been enough fishing to matter.

ewest - BG: I don't usually measure or weigh, so this is an estimate - maybe average about 7" in length, nothing big at all. See ton's of those in the water that size and smaller. You can sit down there with just about any bait (crickets, minnows, worms, dough balls) and catch them all day long if you have a small enough hook. Too big of a hook and they just rob you blind. I've tried a net (round kind you throw, but I am really bad at that.) LMB: You do see some very young ones out there, but most are the exact same size, closer to 12", skinny. The kind where you wouldn't really want to fool with fileting them, but figure you've kept smaller bluegill so why not. As I mentioend we were very good about never throwing anything back, but it didn't seem to help so we've laxed a bit on that. If I had to guess I'd say we've pulled maybe 100 - 150 BG out this year, and maybe 50 - 75 LMB, about 20 crappie, 1 C Cat. I'd consider that a light year fishing compared to what we used to do.

Here's a pic of my little girl's first catch - this will also give you an idea of the size bluegill. (assuming I can get this to work)

[img][/img]