Hi everyone,

New to the forum here. Enjoying and learning a lot.

I'm looking for a sustainable forage to add to my existing bass / bluegill pond. Growing big laremouth is my goal. Pond has (or had) a decent amount of frogs, salamanders, and small bluegills and pumpkinseeds for the bass to feed on.

I had the pond renovated last year to remove the cat tails and the nasty weeds all around the edges. I'm guessing it's close to 3/4 of an acre now. Fish actually survived the muddy waters quite well but I'm guessing their frog and salamander forage took a hit because there's no place to hide.

Rather than letting the weeds grow back up for the frogs I was thinking about adding some type of shad or other forage fish. What kind of forage fish will be able to withstand the cold winters in NY? Pond has plenty of healthy 16"+ largemouth to keep them in check.

Any advise would be welcome!

Also curious if I should be taking out some of the larger bluegills and pumpkinseeds that are too big for the bass to eat. I would try to remove the males if possible. Only concern is will removing some of the larger sunfish cut back on spawning and abundance of bait fish for the bass?

Hey NYF, Welcome to PBF!

With regard to removing SF, one common approach is to remove fish in the size class one size smaller than your biggest. For example, if your biggest BG seem to be 10 inches then you can harvest some 6 to 8. This will retain that spawning capability you mentioned, retain your best genetics and..... give you a chance to hang into some bigguns for fun!

Bill D.

Thanks for the welcome Bill! That makes sense on removing one class smaller on the sunfish.

Golden shiners, gizzard shad and fat head minnows seem to be the only supplemental forage fish that I can find that'll handle the cold winters around here. I don't think the fat head minnows will be able to sustain in the pond due to all the predators. I've heard gizzard shad can get too big so kind of leaning towards the golden shiners. Any thoughts?

Do the pumpkinseed(PS) seem to be relatively common with the BG? They utilize a slightly different niche than the BG thus add forage diversity. It may be difficult to get shiners established if there is reduced amounts of habitat and if you cannot locate adult 5"-7" shiners. If you maintain a proper BG-sunfish population and don't allow the bass to be overabundant the sunfish-BG community can grow big bass as it does in many ponds.

There's actually more pumpkinseeds than bluegills. From what I read pumpkinseeds are good for snails but bluegills spawn more frequently. Does that sound right? I guess they don't compete for the same food so is there any harm in having more of one than the other?

I'm going to see how big of shiners I can get next and research habitat. I had the same concern of it being a one time snack for the bass.

Overall the pond seems healthy with just SF (sunfish) and LMB but a little worried about the lack of bonus forage without the frogs, salamanders or any kind of minnows. Until I get my bonus forage going again I plan on doing a little more harvesting this year to make up for the loss of forage.

BG (Fecundity is about 80,000 eggs per female per year) produce more offspring than PS (Fecundity is 1,034-2,436 eggs per female per year) but both are prolific and both can overproduce and stunt. They can also cross. There is some overlap in their diets so some competition for food. They commonly are found in waters together so that is not an overall problem.