Hey everyone just an update on my pond project. its now been almost a year and a half since we stocked our tiger bass from American sportfish. As you may remember we had fantastic growth with the fish we sampled in the 13-14 inch range this spring and were just about a year old. These guys had been tough to catch since day 1 but somehow they have gotten even more MIA. In the time we have had these bass and they were "catchable" we have only logged about 10 fish over the year and a half span. I am now convinced of one of two scenarios being true:

1. Most of the bass didn't make it early on or thers been a die off we weren't aware of.

2. We got a bad (non aggressive) batch of tiger bass. (I have read about others with similar experiences)

Hoping to electro fish the pond and see what the issue is. Regardless I think we will have to reset most of the bass fishery. There's just no sense in having a bunch of nice bass that aren't catchable if they are there and they have had a year and half to prove otherwise. So then comes my question do I get tempted with the Florida or tiger bass again or go with northern bass which would pretty much guarantee we don't have this situation again. Looking into feed trained as well.

anyways if any of yall have thoughts or input it would be appreciated. Thanks

Have you tried live bait or are you just fishing artificials? In my pond they bite better on live bait than artificial. I just have common northerns and they’re some over ten pounds and many 6-8# . I probably would mix in some northern so you can catch ‘em, like you say why have them if ya can’t catch em

Yeah tried live bluegill, nightcrawlers, grasshoppers just about everything under the sun. I would love to know more about your pond and northerns. Raising a 8 pound northern is no joke especially a couple double digits... Did your northerns start feed trained?

No they were bucket stocked by unknown person . I have caught 3 over ten pounds. Several 8-9 #. So I presume they are native. Didn’t want bass but got them and they have gotten big eating all my crappie. Not sure why there are so many big ladies in there. When it’s cool I will remove some of them to my neighbors 25ac pond