I have an acre and a half pond. It is in good shape and I have tons of bait fish. My native bass are also in good shape and have a few up to 5-6 lbs.

I have an opportunity to get some F1's to stock. Is there any downside to doing so?

What is your goal for the pond? Changing your genetics can be good , bad or in-between depending on goals and conditions.

to grow ten pound bass to catch out of my backyard

You've got a pretty good BOW already. The F1's 'could' help but it won't be as easy as stocking some F1 fingerlings. If they are to be 2-3 in fingerlings or advanced fingerlings on feed ... I would just save the money. The former may not survive the stocking in the presence of your existing bass while the latter might never reach the potential of forage fed bass. If you had a way of stocking 1 or 2 fin clipped F1 females in the 12 to 14 in class (forage fed bass) AND if you help them by removing as many native bass as you can (including the 5-6 lbers) then they might get to 10 lb+. If you don't help them, then they may not get any larger than the ones already there.

Native bass are capable of reaching 10 lbs ... just a thought. If you don't mind having fewer bass and a lower catch rate ... you could do some culling to help the best of your larger fish keep growing. If 10 lb bass are really your goal. Kill every fish less than 3 lbs and select no more than 1 or 2 annually to fin clip and survive. Release these and kill every thing else. You will soon have larger bass (perhaps > 10lbs) but this will come with the cost of lower catch rates.

Good chance that they will be groceries

thanks for the info - I failed to mention that a friend has a pond with only F1s and he offered to let me transfer some - so I would only move a few of the larger ones - 2-3 lbs - not fingerlings

I was just thinking that mixing Floridas in with my native may eventually produce some really nice fish

Lusk says that transferring a larger bass from it's home environment generally causes it to languish and not grow. However, I don't recall him saying that it would lose its breeding instincts and thus pass on it's genes.

If I were going to do it, I would probably wait for cooler water temps like late Fall. We are hitting the point when the water is going to be too hot to fish our Texas ponds.

I stocked my initial 3 LMB last summer. The Male hasn't done much, but the other two have done quite well. I may have to look at trying to remove them after next spring if they can get off a successful spawn.

If it were me, and it's not, I would stock pure Florida's to breed with the native bass. This would put me where I would be producing my own F1's. And the following spawn would produce some F2's with a good possibility of producing some nice fish with strong Florida genes with good growth and maybe up to and around the 13+ lb or larger. My thinking would be if I stocked F1's now and the fish breed with my natives then the fry might lean more toward the natives where I might get a 10 lber.

You have options to reach your goal. Your southern location will allow that goal. The biggest key is enough food (forage , feed or a combo) at the right time and size to grow a big LMB. This means LMB intra species competition needs to be low (not to many LMB mouths to feed).After that water quality is the second key. A stressed fish can not reach its growth potential. The third key is genetics. Keep in mind that Fla genetics means a lower catch rate. It is possible that in a small pond with 2-3 large Fla LMB that you may never get one to bite. Lots here on the subject of catchability. Once you start the genetic change you can not go back without eliminating the LMB population (starting over with LMB).

My best advice , assuming you want to add Fla genes, is to reduce your existing LMB numbers by 30% and find a few female Flas or F-1s at around 12-14 inches and add them in the fall. After that you will need to provide forage and keep LMB competition low (harvest other LMB).

Tim, it is possible to grow 10 lber bass in 1.5 acre pond. Our ponds are similar in size. We went dry in 2011, restocked in Spring 2012 with CNBG and in the Fall 2012 with Overton's F1s. We caught our 1st 9+ lb bass in November 2017.

What we have been doing is keeping the forage (CNBG) fish as happy as possible. I feed about 50 lb of feed every 3 weeks. Add 40 to 50 lbs of Tilapia every spring.

We also take out EVERY bass under 14 inches and most that are under 16 inches.

But we don't have many in the 10+ lb range. Probably no more than 3. A few others in 5-6 lb range.

This will not last forever, in fact I an seeing signs that the bass are becoming stunted. It has been quite an experience and I am sure that we will have start over at some point in the future.

Catching a 10 lb bass out of your own pond - WORTH EVERY PENNY THAT I HAVE SPEND AND ALL OF THE TIME. Good Luck with your pond!

Question - if you take out all bass under 14 and most other under 16 how will that affect the pond long term? At some point your big boys die off - will the smaller ones you missed taking out fill in over time? I assume so

Tim, let me clarify that we only taking out the fish that we are catching - no trapping or other method of removal. For us that is roughly 50 lbs of fish each year for the past 2 years.

The experts will probably need to weigh in on your question, but I think it is unlikely that we can remove enough bass to prevent stunting at some point in the future. My belief is that there are more than enough replacement fish available. We seem to have a good mix of different sizes.

My suggestion to you is to add as much forage fish such as CNBG as necessary to feed your bass. I have no idea what the right quantity is. Frankly it feels like we have been more lucky than skillful.

The last big fish that was caught was this spring was 10 lbs and few oz, was looking a bit ragged and I consider taking it out, but frankly I just couldn't do it. Didn't get a measurement of its length but she looked underweight. Don't always take a scale & tape measure down to the pond, but this year, some of the fish are looking underweight. We probably are see stunting taking place.

We will have to start over at some point in the future and that is ok. It has been one heck of a great run. Happy Fishing!