I'm new to pond boss but have learned a lot from the archives. Great information on here. I work on and off at a summer camp with a 11 acre lake. It is fed by 2 small streams and max depth is 25ish. The lake is about 47 years old and full of big bluegill and LMB. This lake is fished in the summertime by campers but very few fish are harvested and then only the bluegill for a fish fry. Other than that there is almost no one else that fishes the lake for 9 months. The lake bottom is mostly covered with what I think is chara and this year it actually made it to the surface in one spot. The lake also has several docks and a island. The grasses have come in strong this year covering any gradually sloping bank.
As you might of have guessed the bass are overpopulated and stack up in the 10-12 in range. There are lots of those little guys. I have caught 20+ LMB an hour this summer and only 1-20 will be >12. I did catch a 5lb LMB and another 4.5 but it took me 2years of fishing this lake to get them. On the other hand fly fishing for big bluegill is fun and easy. There are lots of large bluegill. Visitors to the lake always remark on the size of the bluegill.
So my goal is to help educate the landowners to establish a more balanced fishery. Trophy bass are not the goal but it would be great to catch good numbers of 14+ in bass and have a few lurkers as well. I will follow up with some pictures and observations while I'm out fishing.
Thanks again for this great resource.
Camp Josh

Welcome to the forum CJ.

Sounds like you need to include LMB in that annual fish fry or even make it exclusive for one year.

Welcome to PBF CJ! Looking forward to hearing more about your project!

Bill D.

CJ,
Welcome to Pond Boss. Lots of good info and helpful folks here.

You have a standard predator heavy/forage light pond. Catch and release plus too small to keep can ruin any pond.

Start catching and eating the bass. leave the bluegills alone.

https://youtu.be/uZfXwyAgNmM

So without any management this lake produced this fish today at 25in. I did not think that any would be that big.

Great fish

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Looking back at the dam.
[img][IMG]http://i1353.photobucket.com/albums/q676/baggetja/image_zpsb620kkxl.jpeg[/img][/img]
Looking towards the feeder streams.

The island.

One of the coves/streams

This what most of the bass look like.

If all those little ones were not eating up most the food before it got the ideal size those bog fish would be even bigger.

I love the grass shorelines!! You may have a few Hogs in there but for the most part you need to start keeping some of those 12 inchers like DD1 said. Keep this in mind. In a pond that size I am 100 percent positive each year you are having LMB successfully spawning in the pond. So every year your going to get new baby bass.... You got to start keeping some of them in that 12 inch range or you will never get that 14 to 18 inch range.... At least not consistently. Yeah you got a few big boys that got lucky and made it but no middle class....Won't be long and your big boys will start to suffer cause all them 12 inchers are eating all the food that would grow a bit bigger for them hogs to eat. You will eventually start to get big head small body syndrome on your bigger bass. Remember a 25 inch bass can eat a 6 to 7 inch BG. So no time then the preset to go have you a big 12 inch LMB fish fry!! Maybe more than one... lol

RC

Beautiful place