Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking Can I turn this pond Around?

I have about a 4 acre pond thats maybe 25 years old. It a perfect square shape with good water quality. Its full of 12-14" northern bass that are all a little thin and probably stunted, and also contains a bunch of hybrid bluegill in the 5-6" range.

What I'd like to do is turn it around to start first getting my bass population healthy and then further working to grow some big fish.

What im thinking is intensively removing the stunted bass. I probably could take out 200 fish and even more if thats not enough.

Then Im thinking spring 09' I could introduce say 60 pure Florida bass that are 1Lbs each = New genetics, young healthy fish, and will get F1's probably in the next spawn. That should help.

Also I could drop in say 500 4-6" CNBG to start establishing throughout the growing season.

This would be next year. The main priority though would be removing stunted bass.

Would this plan do any good or am I not putting in enough Florida's or CNBG in or taking enough bass out. Im a little short of funds, that right there is about $1240 already.

In 2010 I'll have 2 more forage ponds avaliable to grow shiners/shad or more bluegill to get things really rolling.

u should add forage asap fh minnows 10 bucks a pound
thats about 300 minnows per pound

You can turn it around, certainly.

500 4"-6" CNBG should be a good basis for a BG food chain IMHO. I would get them in before next year's first spawn if at all possible.

I am afraid any affordable amount of FHM will merely make your hungry bass happy for a day or so.

WRT the number of stunted bass to remove, rather than try to predict how many must go you need to let the fish tell you. Remove bass from the skinniest sizes until improvement in their condition provides evidence that they have enough to eat.

Be sure and mark (fin clippling would work just fine) your new Floridas so you don't remeove them by accident. I can't remember for sure if "introducing new LMB genetics" should come after "reducing numbers of overpopulated bass", but Lusk's "Raising Trophy Bass" book would give the best info. I would definteily wait until your new CNBG have both spawned AND grown big enough not to fall victim to the Floridas.

chadwickz 71,

It almost sounds like your 25 year old pond was recently started over. Is that the case? If all you have is LMB and HBG, you will need an infusion of forage species fast.

If you have a breeding populaiton of forage species such as BG, RES, golden shiners, gambusia, etc, you may be OK just by removing the skinny 12-14" LMB.

No the pond wasn't started over recently. I mean i know it has a fair amount of HBG in it. Im sure there might be some regular bluegill but probably just enough to make it to the next year.

I also catch a Crappie in it every once in a while, however Im not worried there just because its such a rare catch. They are kept in check fairly well. I don't have any idea how they got in there really.

I will try to get the CNBG in the first of March when Overton opens. As far as the Floridas I might wait and stock them this time next year. That might be a better strategy.

chadwickz71 -

Typically, in a bass crowded pond you will have very large BG. It doesn't sound like this is the case for you. It makes me wonder if your pond might have experienced a partial fish kill within the last couple of years, and things are actually on the right track toward recovery. Like bobad said... starting over.

I witnessed an electrofishing survey on and old pond that was completely surrounded with cattails and submerged vegetation. The pond was crystal clear. All bass captured were thin and under 14". The panfish were various generations of various hybrids bluegill and something else, probably the result of many generations of like species interbreeding I'm guessing pumpkinseeds and GSF but they weren't like anything I'd seen before and they were all less than 6". A couple of channel cats around 9lbs were also caught.

for the past 15 years (as far back as I can remember) its been like this all bass the same size pretty much and all HBG the same size pretty much. Now im just getting into doing things right and decided i should work on this pond.

pretty much the history on the pond was it started out as a 1/4 acre pond, nothing in it. Then about 25yrs ago a dragline and dozer built a dam way behind the original pond and created the 4 acre pond. Shortly after some bass and bluegill were thrown in, probably hybrids gills who knows it wasn't me.

From then own thats it. All that we do is catch maybe 50-100 fish out a year, some years we don't take any out...

You can turn this around. Pull out lmb and keep records. I would look at adding some GS, RE and possibly some Tilapia depending on where you are in Texas. Any cats in there?

If you want big LMB I would work on removing plenty of stunted LMB. Keep records to be able to tell if it's making a difference. I would also try to get rid of as many of the HBG as possible. They are taking up space and eating forage that would be better for your LMB. Eventualy the CNBG will outbreed the HBG but it would help if you removed them. I think of it this way: every time the CNBG spawn the HBG will eat some of their young. Those young would be better of in the mouth of a LMB.

The addition of GSH, Threadfin, or Tilapia would also be a good thing. If you can, all the above forage species would be great.

Call around and check with some people on the forum. You could realy stretch your budget if you do some good shopping around. I found a great deal on GSH just by asking around.

You can certainly turn this around. Stunted LMB is an easy problem to fix. buying and reading the book Raising Trophy Largemouth Bass would be a great start.

About removing enough LMB. they say you can remove 20-30 lbs of LMB per acre in a fertile pond. That being said you should still take good records, They will help you evaluate whether or not what you are doing is working.

I'd be concerned if it's been like this for 2 decades that you've got some really old LMB that are pretty small. I'd take out every LMB I could before I put in new forage & as Brett said take out all the HBG you can. (anyone say rotenone?) I don't think you could possibly come close to taking out enough LMB, no matter how hard you tried. The crappie are another story all together. Since you're bass crowded they probably aren't surviving to adults, but when you cull the bass down and add forage you might be in for a crappie surprise.

I'd want the forage, when stocked, to go into the new younger bass, and your first spawn. I really wouldn't want to start fattening up a 6 year old 13 inch bass.

If you want large bass, I'd lean higher on the BG numbers. And as above lots of types of forage. Tilapia would be good to lessen the pressure on your BG the first year. Might not hurt to feed the BG's as well if you can.

The new Florida genes will help, but remember you probably don't have bad genes in these fish, they're just not growing because they don't have food. So when they do spawn and recruit those fish should be fine if you've got the forage.

aaron man your a pro you pretty said what I was about to type. If on budget do not stock bass anytime soon. make major efforts to remove bass and like Aaron said the crappie. Then stock CNBG they are not cheap so I would limit the bass as much as possible before sotcking any that might get eaten. If all goes well yes your right earliest this time next year on flordia bass.

Be warned florida bass can get lock jaw way more easily than the northerns. Id would not stock florida strain. Id would pull out every bass you could, no exceptions, and then stock shad/shiners/and other forage fish. I would think shocking them up would get rid of many more than you could catch this time of year. Every fish you leave in will dessimate the fish you stock that much faster. Someone probably has plans for making a fish shocker.

Everyone, thanks for all the info, I'll work at it.

As far as catching out fish. I don't think there will be any trouble in taking 200 out. My Dad and his customer took out 100 fish last year in one weekend. The main thing is catch them when they're biting. About 3 times during the summer, for about a 2 week span, you can throw a bare hook in and catch'em. ok, maybe not bare but close.

4-6" CNBG will go in next spring along with maybe some tilapia. Then i'll drop some New genetics in maybe This time next year.

No cats in the pond BTW.

Question? Is a 12-14" bass gonna be likely to eat up my 4-6" CNBG? Im thinking they will...

I'll also work on trapping out HBG. I wish I had a little bit bigger Blue cats. They were 12-14" when I bougth them in October.
I don't think they will be able to eat a 4-6" gill untill maybe this time next year. Although I could cut them up, freeze them and use them as food later on.

LMB prefer eating BG 1/3 to 1/4 their own body length, so smaller BG in the 4"-6" range could be eaten by 12"-14" bass.

the 4-6 inch could be eaten but most suppliers do not have them larger and if they did they would be very pricey. This is why you need to remove as many bass as you can prior to stocking the cnbg or any forage fish.

Hmm.. Well if I hold off on new bass I could afford more CNBG.

Is 500 a good start or should I go with 1000. That would be 250 per acre vs. 125 per acre or adult fish.

Im just keeping in mind that I already have HBG in so I don't want to go over board, if thats possible. I'm hoping the new CNBG will have good spawns throughout the summer and will build up.

if bass is your goal then can not have too many bluegill. We rec 250/acre for many of clients with low bluegill numbers wanting to grow bass.

I was doing some thinking about how to work on this pond that we have discussed so far. Original plan: First and foremost i'll be taking out almost all the fish(stunted bass) I can from now untill next fall. I'll put in 1000 3"-6" CNBG right before spawning season this spring. Then wait untill the fall and put in say 60 1pound Florida bass for genetics upgrading. Floridas gonna run me $840.

Question. What if I put in 6-8" Florida bass in the lake this spring Instead of the larger fish this winter? Would this be a better Idea? These fish would have the whole growing season to get bigger and will have plenty to eat when the CNBG spawn. 100 of these cost $350 not $840. I could take the money I saved and add 600 more CNBG or 45lbs or Tilapia or shad for example. As long as the 6-8" Floridas don't get eaten this might be a better way to distribute my dollars. Im not real sure how many Florida bass im supposed to add be it 1lb or 6-8" when they are serving to upgrade genetics?

What do you think?

Also I had one more thing to ask, when your looking at stocking numbers, CNBG are something like 500-1000 per acre for what i've seen. 500-1000 of What size fish? Are these 1-3" or 3-6"?