Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations overcrowding verdict?

ok...so if anyone was following in the corrective stocking forum, you all know the story. What i am looking for is a list of next steps. What would you do next?

for those of you who do not know the story, here goes....7.5 acre pond that certain homeowners in the community were saying had the symptoms of crowded bass. A large, 38" pike was introduced into the lake 2 years ago, and this past weekend, creel data showed a healthy population of pike between 15-21" long (by size should be 2 years old).

other species include BG's and LMB, Black crappie and at least a couple of walleye (one caught weighted in at 5lbs).

Crappie are enormous, bass are small, some very large bluegill as well. However, bass this winter seemed to be fattening up, even caught one at 19". Of the 40 bass caught, only 10 were kept because of their emaciated appearance, the rest were of size to put back in the lake. In previous years, including once this fall, all bass were skinny enough to want to keep out of the lake (10-12", less than 1lb).

Artificial cover is already in the works, however the extent of the addition might be an issue (but at least some will be added).

In the previous forum, a kind consultant pointed out that the pike are likely stunted as well, which is why there were none above the "2 year" size. Personally, i find this odd, i've been fishing this pond for 5 years, 2-5 times a year and never even seen a pike, but all of a sudden here they are...I don't know, you guys are the experts. It could easily be the case, I suppose, with enough bass, fishing could be overtaken with the bass catch, and the pike were just overlooked.

I have been considering improving forage. Although I don't know what i would add, Golden shiners, I guess. As of now i only know of a topminnow species, as well I will continue to cull the bass population, as they are in bad shape still (although improving). And I wonder if the healthy results i saw were only seasonal.

I'll use this post to put up pics of the BG species, as well as a topo map that6 i've been working on.

The goals that the HOA has for this lake is 2fold
1)fishery
a)largemouth
b)bluegill
c)crappie
d)walleye
e)pike
Pike and walleye would be tied. The reason they are last is because of the children who fish the lake, thier parents (the HOA) might be concerned about big, toothy monsters (:)).
2)a swimming, paddleboat lake
with the water as ridiculously clear as it is, and the springs at the bottom keeping it at a very cool temperature in the heat of summer, the swimming in the lake is a MUST. so no alligators
the HOA will call #1 & #2 equally important.

The goal is still improving the lmb population. Bigger, healthier fish. what the HOA will be scared of is raising the pike population. While a few, i doubt, would be an issue, it will still be scary to them. Case in point, the lake committee chairman came out while we were ice fishing this weekend, saw one of the pike and asked "what does that mean to the swimmers, are they in danger?" I don't think he was convinced that it would take a jaws-sized pike to not be scared off by a small child.

Thanks for any advice I can get. I hope to make a presentation to the HOA and the Lake Committee this spring.

In a lot of ways, Dwight a member on here and you have ponds with similar fish communities. I would contact him and see if he'll give you the ways he has managed his pond over the years. He is growing some very nice sized specimens of several species in his 10 acre lake. I don't know if he has walleye in his lake as I can't recall him mentioning them, but I do know he has all the other species.

I'd love to see pictures of the pond, different sunfish and the topminnow species you talk about being in the pond. I'd really like to see a picture or 2 of the stunted NP you're catching through the ice.

I think the addition of structure would be beneficial and a cheap project for interested members of the HOA. I agree that pike present little to any danger to swimmers, particularly in crystal clear water like your pond has where target identification is not an issue.

I have read the thread- one of the best. Your answers are there if you read through it. Additional advice would be to hire a professional to shock and provide a professional report. We can do it when we go to KY if not too far northin Ill. If interested give us a call or Nate is little north of you in Peoria. Much easier to present to a board the recommendaitons of professional vs. gathered information even though it might be right on point. Good luck semms with the right advice you can have a great fishery.

Unfortunately the lake isn't mine, it's my dad's and he's in the far northern reaches of IL. You can spit to wisconsin from his house.

Ok, i've looked everywhere online, and can't find an example of a "yellowfin topminnow"...dang fish ID book may have led me astray....although i can't ID it for certain, the tiny minnow looks like this:
http://pond.dnr.cornell.edu/nyfish/Cyprinidae/lake_chub.html

with one exception, the main tail fin (excuse the layman's terms) is broader than that, and extends around the tail, like a beta fish, connecting the Adipose fin and the anal fin. It honestly looks like a topminnow, but the only ones of those i find online are tropical, lol...and i don't think a beta fish would survive the winters.

edit-
this is fairly accurate, just more brightly yellow, and without the spots (that i can remember). http://www.bio.txstate.edu/~tbonner/txfishes/fundulus%20notatus.htm

Take a picture of one and I or another will get you a solid ID on it.

Ok, that will take a while, at least a month or 2 before I get back up there.

I'll be putting my Ice-fishing pics online sometime this week, and hopefully will mkae progress on that topo map too. Maybe I could get some help as to good places to put the structure i build.

skinnybass that makes more sense now with the lake in norhtern ILL when talking about ice fishing. I wondered how that was consistent in S. Ill. Good luck sorry I did not pickup on that. I do have a company I can refer though in northern Ill as well if interested but they ain't cheap.

i'd call this the first year in 5 years that i ahve felt safe on the ice in st louis.

good fishing too, the fish aren't used to it, and not only that, but it's not quite so cold. I actually stopped by my lake of choice this morning and checked it, we're still @ 5 inches of ice here.

It sounds like the Lake is balancing itself out. I would just continue to do what you are doing. Remove skinny bass when caught, remove all crappie and pike when caught. Add forage cover. I think you have to weigh out how close you are to your goals vs. possibly going sideways or even South by adding another species. I figured the HA would be alarmed with the pike, especially in a swimming/recreational lake. Ignorant or not, people have prejudices. That's human nature. Not a lot of warm and fuzzy thoughts thinking about little kids in thier inflatable ducks with toothy pike eyeing thier toes. HA people think liability, lawsuit. I'd get them out and crappie can sometimes adversely affect LMB by interupting food chain. I might consider adding a catfish. But I would not add or even consider adding forage until I had adequate forage cover and a lot of those top predators removed.

Might I ask what info makes it sound like it was ballancing out?

I understand that initially i was all doom and gloom, and after the creel data showed some growing bass it is more optimistic...is that the biggest indicator? the growing bass?

I guess what confuses me now is the existence of the pike. even if they were always there, they never were in numbers like this. If i deplete the bass population, won't it just give the pike room to grow? aren't the pike going to continue to devour the bass minnows? aren't the bass the biggest control on the pike?

I guess what i am concerned about is coming back in 3 years and saying, ok, revered pond-masters, help me out with this...solved the skinny bass problem, but now i just have thousands of tiny, angry, starving pike and one 12 lb bass, and the crappie packed up their bags and left for the chain of lakes 2 years ago.

It sounded like you only had 25% skinny bass instead of all of them. That is making progress. The ones you cull are not doing much anyway, I'd take the skinny ones out. They are not helping at all. Just surplus slot bass.

I'd catch and keep every Pike, muskie, pickerel, and crappie. All of them. You will at least slow them down, and not much is going to eat them. If they have lots of babies how many will survive to become breeders? Guess time will tell.

Mainly I would remove the most competition for the forage, of undesirable species. If that is what they are. I think that is what you state on your priorities, fishery and bass. On a body of water that size it is going to be tough and a ongoing effort. No overnight fixes here. But only 25% skinny bass vs 100% seems like progress towards your goals to me.

Without good data we are all just guessing. We need detailed info and pics with times , weights , lengths , species and ages would help. Catch data does not tell a lot about reproduction and yoy survival and small fish (minnows and forage) status so seine data would help. Visual info which we also don't have can add critical parts to the puzzle. Fertility is an open issue as is harvest data and its effects on total mortalities.

Adding structure is probably good but even that depends.

Best step is to get a pro to electrofish the pond and report. If that is not possible then develop the data and report back.

I guess with what we have all we can do is guess. I guess. But it depends on if the guessing is right or not? Without true 100% scientifically gathered data to examine we guess. I have made a career of guessing what will work. Sometimes those guesses blow up in my frog face like a trick cartoon cigar. You try to refine it the best you can, but with an ecosystem underwater, what can you really know for certain? At best you can get a hopeful representive sampling and guess from there. I guess it depends.

Yes but you have to have "a ... representative sampling " to make that guess. IMO we do not come close to that representative sampling here. Just some inconsistent catch info and observations.

I have to agree with ewest in this situation. Although the reports from residents are all consistent...none of them ever saw a baby pike or walleye before, and my dad, even, has never caught a crappie.

So as informed as it might seem, we are really uninformed.

I will be building structure and installing it. there is dreadfully little besides plant cover. I don't really see how it could hurt. (feel free to let me know how it could hurt...you're the experts).


I don't think that the homeowners are really going to go for killing fish, especially in the numbers required. It's a shame, sure, but it is reality. I do, of course, and I have my dad convinced to. But the rest? maybe not so much. It's too "icky" for most of them.

So until i can get more solid evidence together, there really isn't much else i can do, i suppose.

One thing to keep in mind is that if these are pike you are catching and they all of a sudden appeared to be very common out of nowhere is this... Northern pike are VERY spotty spawners in pond and even most man made lakes. They have very specific requirements for a successful spawn and these are rarely met in man made ponds and lakes. Here is a good example of pike spawning in a man made lake from a lake I am very familiar with:

http://www.fish.state.pa.us/images/fisheries/afm/2005/7x04_21shawnee.htm

This lake had a very low northern pike population for years. Then the population blew up when the right conditions existed. Something similar happened to a reservoir near my house. We had a bad drought a few years back. Many of the shallow coves went dry and grew up in vegetation. When the rains came, the vegetation was flooded and the northern pike spawned like crazy that spring. The 2005 year class is just getting to about 32"-36" in size now, makes for some great fishing for pike where they are not common typically.

For skinnybass...

Thanks, Josh...
@ work at the moment, so i can't see the image, but that is (i think) the fat 19" bass we caught...the evidence of the skinnybass syndrome solving itself, I guess. (that's my friend chris...the expert ice-man out of the group of us).

Ok....Now that i have become more familiar with the PB forum, I've found the wealth of information about bass-heavy BOWs. You guys are just plain awesome, you know that?

I read this in an archive:

The pond in question is CRYSTAL clear. You can see the bottom of the lake clearly in places I have identified as 12' of water, and some that I am sure are 14-16.
After more discussions with lake residents (the people, not the fish...;) Growing 2 or 3 12lb monsters is not a goal. Many people enjoy the fast-catching action of the bass-heavy lake. But everyone agrees that ultimately it would be nice to hook into a 3lb mini lunker once and a while.
So given the low fertility levels and the more moderate goals than the initial ones my father and I have, how should I be adjusting the bass population? I had originally used the equasion that each surface acre should maintain 50lbs of bass, making it 375 lbs in the lake, (assuming average weight of just under a pound) I was going to recommend they try to cull 70-90 lbs of skinny bass every year until the balance reached the goal they wanted, then reduce it to around 30 lbs a year (they are considering a 4th of july annual skinny bass fishing derby to do this...they are actually proposing that to the HOA and lake committee before I can get my plan together, I think you guys have inspired a bunch of empty-nesters to take on the task of managing their fishery more actively).

Remember that artificial cover is already in the works.

I have signed 4 more homeowners who frequently fish to start keeping creel data compiled on a google doc spreadsheet, and now the 9 interested parties aren't all on the same geographic side of the lake, which is good. Honestly with all of the info you guys have given me, it is beginning to look like we can get this thing done right, HOA or no HOA.

It may be as simple as removing 20 lbs of LMB per acre from the skinny sized group the first year and measuring the results. In the mean time collect data on size and condition of all types of fish seen and caught. Also water visibility readings over the spring and summer and notes on water color changes.

I think the water clarity statement is a generalization gone bad. Many if not most fish are sight feeders. If you have muddy, turbid or algae tainted waters it makes it hard for them to feed, stresses them and you have even a worse situation than crystal clear. It also can affect thier gills, cause oxygen depletion by reducing normal aquatic plant photosynthesis. My ideal pond, the best I manage is on the clear side. But it has the best zooplankton bloom I have ever seen. I think overall fertility and the proper food chain from the bottom up will be there even if water is clear. It may not be if the water is murky. Just my two cents on clarity.

I think the clarity issue does not involved suspended solids. Suspended solids are no helpful... However, a clarity reduction because of a zooplankton bloom is helpful in most cases.

ewest is dead on, but skinny bass thinks that is his problem, which seems to be simplifying the real issues. I'd say clarity might be an indicator of a lack of fertility, and a resulting lack of phytoplankton, then zooplankton. Bottom of the food chain from lack of fertility. The clarity here is not the cause of his problems, but a symptom.

Not so much think it is THE problem, but rather another wrench in the system that messes up my original analysis and proposal to the HOA I see that as a possible issue to be wary of. what does that mean for the amount of gamefish the lake can support?
howso? Not sure I understand. the problem as I originally thought was overcrowding bass. could those overcrowded predators be having that effect on the zooplankton? I originally thought it was a chemistry issue....the minerals they were digging in the original quarry could have resulted in a high acidic or basic tendency for the water, which could be keeping the phytoplankton down. I know i'm no expert, and I stand to have my opinions corrected

thanks
-skinny