I didn't want to dilute George's thread, so I started this one. How has everyone been? I can't even remember the last time I checked in. I've managed to have two sons in the past four years. Needless to say they've kept me busy. I'm actually in the process of renovating one of our smaller ponds. I plan on setting it up as a 1/2 acre bass heavy pond for the kids. It should be a blast for them.

How is the big lake doing?

It's pretty good. Bass recruitment is still very low, but the hsb still do well in there. The bc and cc are still doing well. Luckily we've gotten their recruitment under control. We seem to have missed a spawn or two on our crappie a couple of years ago and are still rebounding from that.
There was talk of renovating the lake, but the price tag associated with that is daunting. I'd like to harvest bass from the 1/2 acre pond to supplement the population in the larger lake. We've had luck sticking 3"-4" hsb and I wonder if we could stock bass that size with any degree of success.
How have things been with you?

CC and BC? Can you tell me about your experience with those? Specifically BC. Thanks. I'll hang up and listen.

First you should know that my pond is 40 acres. My experience has been good with them as a top line predator. They've been very similar in overall size in my pond, though the cc seem to have a higher growth rate. There's a healthy population of gizzard shad in my pond to support the 30lb catfish that we catch.

WOW! 40 acre lake would be nice How old is the lake or when was it stocked? Your thoughts on why low recruitment with your lmb? I have seen the same but I think mine is due to high numbers of cnbg.

40 acres, wow! I can imagine the renovation bill would be rather large. Some of our reservoirs out here aren't even that big.

Glad you came back! I would like to see some pictures of your place.

If you guys go to Cheyenne's member profile, you should be able to call up his previous posts where there are quite a few pics of his lake and catches.

Now, many pics may be gone if he was with Photobucket.

Stocking survival of advanced fingerling LMB is highly dependent. Mostly on size of LMB and predator type and number. 4 inch LMB survival would be low in your lake IMO - maybe 15% a guess. Survival at 6 inch would be much better - maybe 30%. HSB fit a different niche with not so many pelagic predators after them.

Isn't that sad now? It doesn't seem like it was long ago that we had to host photos on the bucket, and now all of those links are gone. Is there any chance of moving this forum to tapatalk?

You and I agree on that. Both in the survival of the HSB from predation and the limited success of LMB at 4". I appreciate the numbers that you put with it. They can help me decide which size class offers the best benefit per dollar.

The lake was constructed sometime in the 60's. As far as stocking, that's kind of up for debate. It's never really been stored. It was drawn down pretty severely in 2001. Supplemental stocking has been done several times. The real root to our lmb recruitment is two fold. We already have a low population of lmb and we have a fairly shallow lake that receives a large amount of wind fetch. The wind silts in the lmb nests and slows recruitment. The wind fetch keeps sediments suspended and allows us to have an extremely high carrying capacity.

Any Guestimates on the growth of your BC over the years? Do you feed them or natural forage?