Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking Bluegill problem

Long time lurker turned poster......

Pond background: 2 acres about 50 years old......stocked long time ago.

Long story short I have a bluegill problem. I am deployed right now and one of my friends back home fished my pond and gave me a report that the bass are thin and the bluegill are out of control.

They are tiny and in the thousands. He said they were following my buddy as he walked around the pond, don't know what that means at all.

Anyway, what's my action here, remove bluegill first, or stock predator fish?

I won't be able to do anything till october, but I can get a game plan together right now.

Thanks in advance

Welcome to the forum Carpman and thank you for your service.

Be prepared to answer some questions from the experts. I think it's a bit strange that you have an overpopulation of BG, but your LMB are small. Usually it's one or the other, plenty of BG, large LMB, or plenty of LMB and big BG. If your friend has not been removing any BG you may want to suggest that in the early going here, till the experts on this forum get a clearer picture of your situation. You've found the right place to put a game plan together!

thanks for the response omaha. By "thin LMB" I meant in numbers not size...sorry for not clarifying that part. Probably just need to start pulling BG out, but i'll wait for some more responses before I start culling.

Gotcha. By all means start taking out some BG if you want a more balanced fishery. It all depends on your goals. How big are the LMB that are being caught.

First off, Welcome to the forum, and a great big THANK YOU VERY MUCH for your service to your country!

That's an unusual scenario to have, i.e. skinny bass and lots of small BG.

That could be caused by a few things.

1) The bass are large, and someone has helped the LMB clean out all the larger BG. Now they have to work hard for every small mouthful that they get. (you are missing a year class or two of BG) If your buddy can, have him report back how big (long) are the LMB, and what they weigh. Pictures would be nice as well.

2) There is a tremendous amount of cover (i.e. weed growth) for the BG to hide in when the LMB go looking for dinner.

How big (size and depth) is the pond?
Is there a lot of cover in the pond?
What other species of fish are in the pond?

I'm sure the experts will come up with some other reasons that I forgot.

Dang it, that's what I get for not making sure that I read all the posts!

If the numbers of LMB are low, there won't be enough of them to keep in front of the BG population.

You could either:
1) make a couple BG traps and see if your buddy would help you while you are overseas by setting and cleaning out the traps for you.
2) add more LMB. Make sure that they are at least 1/2 as big as the largest ones in the pond now so they don't become expensive dinners for the larger residents.
3) buy or borrow a seine and run it thru the pond a few times when you get back home, removing some of the smaller BG. Or contact a pond management company for a fish population survey.

In reality, until we know more about the pond, it's fish population and it's habitat (structure and cover) we're just guessing and could be giving you wrong answers to your problem.

It could be that you have plenty of LMB in there, and the BG population is just right, but the LMB have been fished hard and don't like objects with sharp pointy things attached to them.

Hello Carpman and welcome to Pond Boss. A heartfelt thank you for your service to our country.

Here is a photo of the bass. He only caught two in like 5 hours of fishing.......it looks to be about 1.5 - 2 lbs. Not a bad looking bass, but the numbers are just not there.

Something I forgot to include is the Channel cats are eating good, my buddy said he saw a good 10 pounder following the bluegill around.

Pond info:

2 acres
50 years old ( at least )
Stocked who knows when?
Species: BG, LMB, Crappie(not many), Channel Cats, and a couple Amurs.

My buddy has a cast net and a boat that he could use to get some of the bluegill out of there.....looks like I need to put more bass in there also.

I could place an order now for fall stocking?

What do you guys think?

Hard to tell what the real answer is. Lack of bass action could men full bellies due to abundant forage. That bass looks like it is getting what it needs.

It could also be that your bass are getting conditioned due to lots of fishing pressure. I wouldn't be hasty about removing any BG.

From the picture of the LMB, I'd take out more CC, especially the larger ones. While the LMB doesn't look skinny, it isn't fat by any means. The CC will eat the smaller BG which takes food from the LMB.

Look here to compare length vs. weight. You want the fish to be at least the size/wt of the fish in the chart, and heavier is better.

I have caught a few LMB in my pond that were 14"-14.5" and weighed between 2 and 2 1/4 pound.

How much of the pond has weeds in it (% wise)? How much fishing pressure does it see (and what fish species are targeted)?

As far as i know, I only have a bottom sludge problem, no weeds. This pic below is of the pond in the summer. As you can see there is a lot of shallow stuff by the island, but no visible weeds. My friend that fished it said there are no weeds also.

Any more suggestions?

That is strange. I'm fighting a pond with severe bg problem now because it had a lmb die off. I am culling all the bg I catch. Adding res, gsf, to compete with them. Adding many lmb to get those numbers back. No cc. That lmb is skinny to me. If you have no horrible vegetation problem than I think you have either one of two things. Out of control cc problem, or poachers. CC can ruin a lmb population overtime by outcompeting them. But with a lot of bg, something is not right.

quote PF " ... something is not right."

I agree. We need more info on the fish population. Each fact adds to the potential we give you a good answer. I would start with taking out a few CC. You need to get your friend to do a seine survey and find out if you have yoy (baby) BG and LMB. Also look for crappie. They could be part of the problem.

Carpman -- first, a hearty welcome from Pond Boss. We're glad you discovered us.

I don't think I'd get too worried over the situation. I was out for about an hour late this afternoon. I estimate that I caught about 25 bluegill, and I caught three bass. Not one bluegill was over 4-inches. The bass were all about six inches.

I'm secure in my Pondhood. I know I've got bigger bluegill than most. I know I've got skinny bass, but lots of them in the 8-15 inch range.

After I tried to catch dinner, I fed the fish. Usually, it is a feeding frenzy. Not tonight. One catfish and several small bluegill.

Several more fishing reports will be needed before you should start panicking.

Ken

thanks for the info guys......I am just worried that the population has changed over the years with the previous owners. Right now I have only the information that I collect from fishing right now.

I'll have my friend go back and start fishing some more and see if he gets more bass next time. Also, I'll just have him start throwing some bluegill out also.....

Thanks!