Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations New Found Pond

I stumbled onto this site and all I can say is WOW. What a wealth of information. I wish I would have known this site existed years ago. Anyway, I recently moved to east central Kansas and have a 2 acre pond on the property. The pond is spring fed and water temps are in the low 50’s right now. I have fished the pond a few times the past week and have caught several healthy 6-7” bluegill, skinny 6-10” bass and, 12”-13” healthy black crappie. It appears that the bluegill and crappie populations are healthy but the bass appear to be struggling. I would like the have 12”-18” healthy bass with 5lb. fish not uncommon. What steps can I take myself to get a better evaluation of the pond’s fish population, and after I do that what can I do to get a better, healthier bass population? I plan on catching a good sample 20+ bass and bluegill and doing an RW. I would suspect that I will have a low RW for bass and a high number for bluegill. What steps can I take to “fix” the discrepancies? Anyway, what a wealth of information, please keep up the good work. I’m spreading the word.

I think I would first take a look at the overall pond fish biomass. Use the search function and you will get the answer relating to the crappie. Your skinny bass are an indication that they aren't getting a good shot at the forage. They need bluegill and lots of them. I expect the crappie are clobbering the small bluegill before the bass get a chance. It takes a pond full of all sizes of forage (bluegill) to grow the bass.

I would remove every crappie I could catch first, as they are propably consuming all the bluegill young. A 2 acrea pond is too small for crappie and this will make managing it for larger bass difficult. Next see if the bass start to gain weight. You may have too many bass and may need to remove 40 lbs. of bass to balance the population.

Dave