I'm still trying to come up with my management stradegy as to what size fish to keep and when to start. I stocked everything from yoy to a few 7 inch sunfish but I would say the vast majority of sunfish were 4-6 inches when stocked starting at the end of March. I would put then muber at 200 adult sunfish. BG have spawned and there are a ton of fry. I also stocked 9 9-11 inch bass that have spawned. I was reading Lusk's book and it said not to keep more than 25lbs of bass per acre per year. My pond is about 1/4 acre full so that would be 6lbs for me. If I am managing for big sunfish then my stocker bass will most likely need to be removed next year or whenever they start hitting 15inches. If I was to take out all 9 at 1.5 lb average then I'd be removing to many bass right? What about sunfish? Should I start keeping them? Gambusia have also spawned like crazy and there is a ton of forage.

Keith,

If I remember right, Mr. Lusk recommends no more than 100 lbs/acre. So that would put you at 25lbs carrying capacity. I could be wrong...it's happened before.

Joe

see, and that's managing for bass so that's the question. I want to manage for big bg but if i take out the bass at 15in so they can't eat my big bg then i will exceed the max i should be pulling out especially if I wnat them to overpopulate. Is this just a neccesary evil to get rid of the original stockers before i hit the overpopulated stage for the lmb to help manage bg?

All IMHO:

Don't worry about taking out the original bass stockers until 1) you have a couple of year classes coming along behind them and 2) they start getting bigger than your desired-size-for BG-control slot (sounds like you may be thinking the same 12"-15" I am). And even then - will you be able to remove them all at once, or even all of them period?

When managing for Big BG (if I understand Dr. Anderson and Dr. Condello correctly) you want your bass biomass at near 100% carrying capacity and your sunfish population at perhaps 60%. I figure if my 100% bass capacity is made up of greater than the "bass manager's" recommended number of hungry, low RW bass, they'll be eating the maximum number of BG possible.

The ones that are 11" now will be over 15" by the end of next spawn right? Should I just plan on harvesting bass after the spawn next spring? That would give me this years yoy and next years fry waiting in the wings so that would be two generations after the original stocking. I'm just worried about those bass eating my big sunfish and if I can't catch them all which I probably won't then they'll be eating my big bg. Also, I'm still kinda up in the air on the sunfish. If I stocked 5 inchers in march/april will those be over 7 by the end of summer? I was thinking about releasing anything over 7 or 7.5 or something like that to let them go on to get very big. Any help or thoughts would help. For those of you that manage for big sunfish what are your slots set at for keeping?