I have a 7 year old 1 acre pond. It is pretty established with LM bass, bluegill, flathead minnows and habitat. I have caught a few bass around 2.5 and 3 lbs but would like to see them continue to grow bigger.

The dozer contractor that dug my pond has a 20 year old 1.1 acre pond that has produced a 14 and two 8 lb bass. His 14 pounder is mounted on his living room wall. He tell me the secret to having large bass is establishing it with a good crayfish population and having good water clarity with aeration.

I have fished his pond a few years ago and caught about half dozen bass between 2-3 lbs. During late summer, on the pond banks, you can see crayfish shell littered on the shore where the water has reseeded. I have picked up a couple large rocks on the water edge and they are full of crawfish. Although his pond has bluegill, they are not as plentiful as my pond.

A few months ago, I bought some crayfish traps off Amazon and trapped 200-300 med/large crayfish from a nearby creek. I have also used a 8 foot bait/cast net and caught several hundred 4-6 inch shiners with a few dozen 8-10 inches long.

Although I will probably continue to stock my pond with both crayfish and shiners, I am curious which bait will be the most beneficial to growing large bass in a small pond. Also, curious which one will continue to reproduce and populate.

I hear shiners can be difficult to populate if the pond is already established. I am curious if this is the same case with crayfish. Any suggestions or thought would be appreciated. Thanks, Jack in N. Alabama.

No idea about crawdad spawning numbers. The big bass objective is best achieved with large prey. A bass needs prey that is about 25 to 30% of its body size or a heckuva lot of smaller ones that are easily caught. But,in a one acre pond it’s pretty tough without intensive management and the right size prey.

Crayfish are actually lower in protein than fish. Certain sunfish species in abundance are better suited to provide high growth rates, but variety is also key.

AJ, you may consider systematically harvesting your skinnier LMB in addition to adding forage. Really should have larger than 3 lb in 7 years. Do you have northern LMB, F1, or Florida?

Anthropic, all my bass are Florida strain. We lost a lot a fish a few years ago with a big flood that spilled large amounts of water into my creek. I am still recovering with the bass population. With all the bass loss, my BG population has increased double fold.

I grew up in Florida and moved to AL 12 years ago. I have caught few bass over five pounds and one just over ten pounds in lakes in Florida where shiners were plentiful but I have never fished a small farm pond like the pond I discussed in my first posting. As I said, his pond has far less BG than in my pond. The only bait he has stocked in his pond besides BG is crayfish and flathead minnows. I didn't even think a 1 acre pond could support a 14 pound and a pair of 8 pound bass. The only thing I can contribute to his success is the crawfish which are plentiful. Perhaps bass use less energy eating crawfish than chasing fish.

That sounds believable! Crawdads are pretty skittish, but they aren't the smartest creature. Any videos that I have seen of a LMB getting one for a snack looks to be very low energy.

I am in the infancy of my pond with crawdads and predators, but I firmly believe that the success of a crawdad forage base relies on having plenty of shallow rocky habitat for them to live and avoid predation. Time will tell if I have enough...about 22 to 25% of my shoreline.

In Florida I use to catch crawfish underneath floating vegetation such as hydrilla and lily pads. We would catch enough of them to make a good dinner.

It will likely take a lot of both and other prey as well to maintain and grow large LMB. It is not an either or situation. It is difficult to create a sustaining population of either GS or craws in an existing pond with adult LMB. It can be done with the right habitat and numbers.

The problem with establishing shiner is getting the correct size of fish to stock. Too small and they are eating up too fast by bass, too big and they have reproduction problems. 1. In an article titled "Golden Shiners," according to Bob Lusk, he writes, "There’s this tiny, little ovarian parasite that rocks the world of golden shiners, and those people who produce them. Ovipleistophora ovariae is a parasite, of the class Microsporea. When it infects the ovaries of golden shiners, which it typically does after the fish spawn their first time, fecundity rates plummet, and usually by more than 40%. By the second year, most female golden shiners are functionally sterile." For this reason alone, I may have better luck raising BG and Crawfish.

1. https://www.bobluskoutdoors.com/articles/golden-shiners-2018-09-4612

Can someone explain why natural 'birth control' for GSH is a bad thing? This is perfect for me where I'm trying to create forage base but do not want the GSH to overpopulate. I don't have my top predators in the pond yet, and this way my adult GSH which hopefully by now at 6" and larger, have the 'worthless ovaries', and are just growing bigger, but not making more babies.

Then when my apex predator comes in, they can eat the adult (or grandparent age) shiners as they get sluggish, and the current babies can become adults, make more babies for a couple of years and then stop.

I wonder if someone could invent an ovarian parasite for middle age females of the human variety?

+1, and ROFLMAO!

canyoncreek,

According to the same article, Bob Lust has never seen a GSH overtake a pond. The same goes with the Green Sunfish - another false myth that they can take over a pond. You can control both with proper bass or predator population.

Unlike large pan fish, large GSH will soon be eaten by a moderate size bass. They are slender enough to be eaten by any descent size predator.

I guess with plenty of LMB there never would be a problem, but I do hear regularly on this forum that once the GSH reach a certain size that folks are recommending catching and removing them. I wasn't sure why that recommendation unless it is that they are consuming too many young fish of the more desirable species (like those who are trying to establish YP in a YP/GSH only pond?)

Dr. Luke, it is a common problem that I'm sure you face often, men in their 40s who desire no more children and women in their 30s and 40s who agree but who do not want to do anything about it for the next 2 decades, and then the problem is somehow up to the men to fix for them.... but I digress.

I would want to keep some ongoing GSH reproduction every year so it would be helpful to know if the parasite was doing real harm or not.

Sometimes people mix up golden shiners and gizzard shad with the abbreviations GSH and GShad. That could be it.

I also have a vague recollection that GSH get some ovarian parasite that limits their reproduction eventually -- maybe these are the target population to remove?

I live in N Alabama, 30 minutes from one of the top 10 bass lakes in the US - lake Guntersville. This lake is over populated with gizzard Shad. I have caught many of them over 12 inches and twice as wide as a Golden Shiner. They are controlled by monster LMB and Stripe bass which can get over 50 lbs in this lake.

I would love to stock my pond with threadfin shad but in a small pond, the gizzard shad would eat everything and take over. They are aggressive eaters and grow too big too fast for most small ponds with BG and LMB.

If I owned a lake over 10 acres, there is no doubt that I would add Gizzard Shad. In my observation, most trophy lakes in the south have gizzard shad. As for threadfin shad, they are just too delicate to keep alive. Shiners and crayfish seem to be the best option for small pond owners.