Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking Just bought a pond... now what?

Hey Guys,

We just recently bought a new house, with a really nice 1/3 acre pond. We've been fishing in it several times to find out what exactly we have in it. Apparently the previous owners didn't really do anything with it and had no idea what was in there. For the first couple hours we didn't even get a bite, until we switched to live worms. Then, we started slaying the bluegill. Only problem is, they are about 2-3" max. It almost seems like the pond is going to burst there are so many. As soon as a live worm hits the water you've got a bite within 10-15 seconds. I was also able to catch one small cat (5-6")

I've been told there are bass in it, but we can't get past the wall of small bluegills to catch any. I'd like to begin managing it for large bass, as well as decent catfish fishing. I'm assuming I need to add some bigger LMB to get the bluegill population under control. Any other suggestions you guys have would be great.

Thanks a lot. I'm looking forward to getting started on this.

Welcome to the Forum, OU fan, and congratulations! You are the proud owner of practically every farm pond I fished when I was growing up.

"Told there are bass in it" usually means they were stocked at one time. LMB are aggressive enough, and so relatively few in numbers that they can be effectively fished out of a smaller pond. This is what we would see when I was a kid - no one knew squawt about pond management, all eating sized fish (which meant virtually every LMB caught) were removed, and we saw a lot of small BG. (Can anyone ever fish all the BG out of a pond?)

Adding a number of middlin' sized LMB (10" - 12") would allow them to start eating those little BG, leaving more food for the remaining gills. LMB prefer to eat BG from 1/3 to 1/4 their own body length. If you are interested in larger bass, you don't want to add too many - I'll start the bidding at 25 LMB.

All those hungry BG, as well as any CC should really take to supplemental feeding during the warm months. 1/3 acre would be easy to hand feed effectively, if you will be around once or more per day to toss in fish feed. Read up on feeding threads before next Spring and we can answer any questions you have on that.

I recommend in adding relatively few CC. If you feed them, they will grow very quickly and can easily hit 10 pounds if not removed. A bunch of 10 pound CC can take up a huge amount of the space (wrt oxygen, water quality, etc.) available for fish in 1/3 acre. CC are available in larger sizes for restocking with larger bass at reasonable prices, so just stock no more than you plan on removing in the first couple of years. I wouldn't go higher than 20 myself.

Consider adding some larger RES if available. They eat snails which harbor many fish parasites during one portion of their life cycle. You'll want them bigger than the BG that the new bass are supposed to eat, so that the Redears don't become bass snacks. Maybe 20 6"+ in size.

OB, was the small catfish you caught a bullhead?