Pond Boss Forums FISH & FISHING Sunfish-Including Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass Finding Bass Pond owners ?

There is no need to guess. Assuming that you have captured all of my good posts and printed them on quality paper and carefully placed them into a well organized file you would know that you would have 36 posts filled with wisdom and intelligence.

Don't make me get all Sock Puppet on you.

Wow - great replies everyone thank you.

My policy on hunting and fishing was to allow it with very strict caveats in writing and check up on them immediately afterward or even during their visit. I gave them a permission letter to be on the property with what was specifically allowed and anything else I considered trespassing. I have no idea if the law would consider it trespassing, but anyone I gave permission to either folloed the rules or never showed up to begoin with...If there was an "infraction" (never had one), I informed them I would make a criminal report.

It's equally important to let the people with permission know who is welcome also , That way they can help notify you if others were out there without permission.

We only allow 3 poeple at the house for hunting and fishing, myself, Dad and 1 friend. At the farm there are 9 guys with permission to hunt and they all have met and know each other. We have an annual gathering of everyone with permission and if they don't make the meeting then they aren't allowed hunting rights that year. This ensures if one of them see another hunting they know without question if the intruder is suppose to be there or not. It also gives them the ability to confront someone and tell them they are not suppose to be there with confidence they are correct. Allow your friends to help you police the place.

This process could also be used with remote ponds/ property where you wouldn't be able to frequent very often.

Rex, don't you have tresspassers all the time on your place now?

The last person to get charged with trespassing on my property was.....ME!!!

Like I said.

I recently placed an ad on Craigs List looking for someone to weed eat my property in exchange for fishing rights. I was flooded with e-mails, I screened over 30 people over the phone and in person, I'll never do that again. The point I am trying to make is, some/most pond owners (me included) are very skittish about outsiders fishing our ponds/lakes.
I say, try a CL ad, just make sure you give a brief description of yourself and what you are willing to do in exchange for fishing rights…..just a suggestion…..good luck.

AJ - Welcome to the forums from another NE Georgia pond owner!

The rules at our pond are quite simple - we will take you fishing with us but only one other person has permission (written permission) to be on our property and fish any time he wants besides my buddy and me (we own the pond together).

That person builds our rods for us, comes out with his weed-whacker and chain saw and works with us almost any time we ask him - and sometimes he goes out and does some yardwork and cleanup and work on our boats without us even asking.

Now, we will invite people to come and fish with us all time. But, that's the key - we say that we will take you fishing at our pond but you can't go there without us. We love sharing our pond with our friends but we treat it like our living room - you can come over and visit us but you can't just walk into our house when we're not home.

Anyway, if you (or any of the rest of you guys here) want to come fishing with me, just gimme a shout. I'd love to take you fishin' at our pond sometime.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Thats the same way I feel about it. Ill take anyone fishing but I don't want people taking advantage of things when im not there. Theres only a handful of people I would trust enough to do that.

I think the days of allowing strangers to access your property are almost gone. Private Property Hunting in Texas is the norm not the exception. People have been paying money to hunt private property for many years; it is impossible to find a landowner in the state of Texas that will allow you to hunt without compensation. I beleive fishing is where hunting was 20 years ago. Finding landowners willing to allow you to fish without compensation will become harder and harder. Some listed many of the reasons why this is true. However, landowners can make $10,000 or more a year with a great lake. We have some making $20,000 a year. Money like that can interest some landowners. Moreover, harvesting fish from most lakes is a positive and very few landowners can harvest what needs to be taken on larger private lakes. On large fertile private lakes, removing 1000 fish a year is difficult to accomplish by a landowner who allows only a few days of fishing a year. Of course, the shock boat is an option, but it costs. There are many other reasons landowners lease access to their lakes; save that for another post.

Interesting post Steve but I don't see many pond owners going the route of a paid fishing pond. I would guess that the vast majority of pond owners here have ponds that are 3 acres or less (wasn't there a thread about this somewhere?). Although it would require some number crunching I don't see the economic viability of the average pond owner (with a 3 acre or less pond) selling fishing rights. Using a rate that I see on your property listings of $45 per day for fishing, a pond owner would have to sell over 220 day passes (not sure of the correct terminology) to make $10,000. That is a lot of fishing on a smaller pond.

I would think that the fishing pressure required to make much money on a smaller pond would be excessive. Also, at least in California, when you have people on your property for business purposes the exposure to legal liability for the property owners goes up exponentially.

If you had a larger BOW I can see paid fishing as a possibility, on a smaller BOW I just don't see this as a viable alternative.

But that is just my opinion backed up with inadequate data and prejudicial thinking.

+ .547

Yea!

And that my friends makes 47 good posts and that ain't bad!

Jeff,

You are absoutely correct, that the math does not work on a 3 acre pond or smaller. I should have been a bit more thorough in my earlier post. My fault. I was referring to ponds/lakes that are 25 acres and larger. Moreover, the math does not work unless we are charging more than our "standard" rate of $45.00 (which will move to $55.00 in January). However, the math does work on larger lakes (25 acres or larger) that have trophy bass where we command $100 to $200 a day per person. Doing the math this way allows the lake lots of rest time between fisherman and keeps the fishing good. These lakes can handle fishing pressure of 25 to 50 trips a year with 2 to 4 people and make the $10k to $20k mentioned in the earlier e-mail. I was unaware that the average pond owner's pond was less than 3 acres on this site. That is good information. Perhaps this post is for the 1 in 500 ponds, but that still leaves 1000's if not 10's of thousands of ponds where this scenerio fits. I think the orginal post was how to find Bass Pond Owners, which led to its hard to find for all the reasons mentioned. I just wanted to let the original poster to know there are landowners who will lease their pond/lakes, but it generally costs more than they might think. However, my expereince is that there is a growing population of fisherman who will pay and a growing population of landowners will lease. It is very similar to private land hunting 20 years ago.

Jeff,

I fogot to mention that liability insurance on a property used for hunting or fishing is very inexpensive. We carry a 2 million dollar policy for each property and it is suprisingly inexpensive.

So at about 25 acres the math begins to make sense. Steve that is excellent information. It's also good to hear that the liability policies are not very expensive. I can see this being a viable opportunity for someone with a larger pond. (This gets the CPA in me giggling over tax deduction opportunities).

Mismanaging a 3 acre pond is about all I can handle, I can't imagine tackling a 25 acre pond.