Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Largemouth Bass Problem

After fishing the pond alot over the last month and catching lots of decent sized (12-18") bass, I've noticed that almost half of them were very skinny and had unproportionally large heads. There is plenty of forage in the pond with small panfish, minnows, shiners, and shad, so I'm not entirely sure whats wrong. Does anyone have any ideas?

This is interesting, what kind of shad are they do you know? How big is the pond? How old is it? When you say there is plenty of forage, is that by what you see when walking around? or you often catch panfish and other forage fish on rod and line?
An 18 inch bass that has to run around catching minnows is not going to gain weight. He will want (in a perfect world) to eat ~6in BG or ~9 inch shad or even ~10 inch bass. Do you feel you have that size of those fish?

Another suggestion could be to start pulling out the fish with oversize head to body ratio, and see if condition of the others improve.

Tell us a little more, and maybe we can get some help from the experts

Or, do you have too much vegetation and the bass can't get to all the forage hiding in there?

I know that I had a few that had gotten really old and started going down hill. Sometimes even though you think you have plenty of forage there may not be anything for certain size bass to eat. You may have plenty to feed the smaller bass and larger bass but nothing that the 14-18" bass are feeding on. In other words you may have to many bass in that 14-18" size range and they have over eaten the size bluegill and shad that they were feeding on and it takes 3 times as many of the smaller ones to keep them up, and they may be wasting too much energy trying to catch those smaller forage fish so not much is actually going to gaining weight. I just reread jakes post and thats pretty much the same thing he said.

everything mentioned are valid points, the problem is they are all things it "could" be. IMO the best way to find out for sure is electrofishing sample, then intensive self survey via, rod and line, traps, nets, etc and documenting all you catch and size not just bass, all fish.

From someone currently fighting a very simmilar issue, you should listen to jakeb. I wracked my brain trying to figure out what was going on and how to improve the pond overall. What i came to find out was that i didn't have near enough info to base a plan of action on. Need to survey a big portion of the population.

My documentation is growing....just creel data, no electro-surveys just yet, but we'll see.

Good luck with your skinny bass problem. The giant wonky heads are creepy - especially when the head is way too big, and it looks like a fish skeleton with scales on it. I call those the skeletor bass.

Often those skeletor bass are losing weight as opposed to stunted. They were once heavier and now are starving due to lack of food of the right type/size.

What is the difference you ask. Certain sized LMB looking like that while other sized ones look more normal indicates an emerging problem not a long term existing status.

The pond is 2-3 acres, a gravel pit, with very spare vegetation currently. It is about 8 years old or so, fairly young. I know there is plenty for them to eat with all the small to medium size bluegills, shiners, fatheads, and gizzard shad. This is why I just don't understand it...? And jakeb it doesn't seem to be effecting any of the the other fish, the crappies, white bass, and bluegills all seem to be normal, actually they are all pretty fat haha

Hmm well to go with what ewest was saying, they could just be old fish on the downhill side of life? Is 8 year old lmb in pennsylvania getting pretty old? or still midlife?

LMB in PA typically grow pretty slow. An 8 year old largemouth is probably half way through it's life.

An interesting growth chart from a lake near my hunting cabin in PA:
Average age and growth of largemouth bass in Koon Lake
Age Inches
1 4
2 7
3 9
4 11
5 13
6 14
7 16
8 18

They electroshocked a 22", 6 pound 3 oz LMB they found to be 13 years old. Slower growth rates in northern waters mean longer life spans.

thats right CJBS2003...I really don't understand whats going on