Pond Boss Forums INTRO New Forum Member Introduction New Member - 1st Time Post - Seeking advice

Hello, I'm a brand new member to the Pond Boss Forum. I live in Shreveport, LA and along with my brother and sister, own a 30 acre pond near Homer, LA. Our pond is about 15 years old. We initially stocked it with Fla. bass, coppernosed bluegill, black crappie, and blue channel catfish. Several years later we stocked it with approx. 100 sterile grass carp to help control emerging aquatic vegatation. Initially, we had large numbers of fish and had no problems catching them. We had one automatic fish feeder. We have caught bass weighing up to 12.5 pounds however, during the past few years, we aren not catching nearly as many bass or large bream as we used to. We never really "managed" our lake, until now. We hired a fisheries biologist/lake management consultant and found that we needed to correct the pH, alkalinity, hardness of our water. We recently added 100 tons of lime to the lake. We've begun herbicide application and are preparing to apply water soluable fertilizer in hopes of creating an algae bloom. We've added 3 additional automatic feeders around the lake and have begun using high protein feed. Eventually, we hope to stock threadfin shad as additional forage for our bass. One biologist recommended that we catch or shock out a min. of 1,000 smaller bass (under 11") from our pond, because it is overcrowed with small bass. Any other recommendations or advice from Forum members would be very much appreciated. Thanks. Guy K.

Welcome! What did the biologist say about the crappie? The largemouth (LMB) overcrowding issue is common. You have your work cut out for ya in removing the LMB, 1,000 is just a start in that size BOW. You won't see results overnight, but it sounds like you are on the right track. Are the CNBG (coppernose) that you catch large or are there a variety of sizes?

Did you stock Blue Catfish, Channel Catfish or both? What sizes are they now?

I'm sure others will chime in. If you have a chance, take a look in the archives for a thread called acronyms. You'll see a lot of them bounced around here, and it'll help you learn the "shorthand".

A 30 acre "pond". I'm jealous!!

Thanks for your reply and welcome. Our biologist didn't have much to say about the crappie in our lake. We never have caught huge numbers of them because we are mostly bass fishermen. But we do have some nice schools of crappie in the deep area in front of our dam and have caught them on jigs. The CNBG are a variety of sizes. We do catch some large ones, but not as many as we used to. We initially stocked channel catfish but there aren't many left. We caught most of them out and they haven't been successful in restocking themselves. Guess we'll have to re-stock some large ones 12"-16." We are anxious to see how the 100 tons of lime affects our water quality. We are also anxious to begin fertilizing. We have about a 30% coverage of milfoil and other aquatic weeds that we are going to treat before we start with the fertilizer. Our goal is to also stock a large number of threadfin shad if we can. This stuff gets to be real expensive! Fast!

Welcome to PB . Yes it does become expensive quickly. You should consider that before you make a long term choice. That would include lime , fertilizer and feeding. Can you post a copy of the reports you got from the biologist? That will help with suggestions.

Think about goals while you read about mgt here on the forum. Suggest these links for a starter. You need to know enough about the subject to understand what the reports mean and if you want to go that way or chart another course. It should be about what you (family) want and not necessarily what the biologist says.

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=1736&Number=19169#Post19169

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92440#Post92440

Can you drain the lake and seine the trophy fish to a pond? This would allow you to more cheaply work on your big lake.

Also, if your family considers the lake "non-productive" at this time, then you have little to lose by experimenting and doing it yourself. (Obviously a big budget and expert help is better, but don't hurt your family finances to get the lake fixed fast.)

Finally, posting the reports would help with the advice. I am not an expert at all, but I believe it is possible to get a crappie population that can break the food chain to the LMB.