Pond Boss Forums INTRO New Forum Member Introduction Restoring balance in approx 3 acre pond

I just joined up and this is my first post. I am blessed to have about a 3 acre (surface area) pond in south east GA. Pond is about 4 years old and was originally stocked with 3000 mixed panfish (bg,hb,res), 300 lmb, and 30 sterile grass eating carp. As of last summer panfish were doing well with several weighing a full pound. Bass are plentiful but have not caught or seen any over about 12 inch and about 1.25 lb.

Problem: The carp are huge. Have seen some that apppear to be 36 inch +. The grass or any other vegetation is non existant. Even though I have fertilized regularly each summer. I feed pellets year round but heavy in the summer and light in cold months. The carp suck it up like a squad of vaccuum cleaners. I bought the recommended (by the seller) number of each species originally. I am afraid that I am seriously overstocked on the carp.

If any of you experienced folks can confirm my deduction do you have any suggestions on how to economically remove the appropriate number of carp without draining the pond.

Please forgive the length of this post but I wanted to give a good snapshot of where I'm at to start up. Thanks for any assistance any of you may provide.

Hey BLT..Welcome! bow and arrow seems to be the most given advise here.

Welcome to the forum!

30 grass seems a bit high for most ponds and particularly a newly filled pond. There are options...

Bow fish for them
Shoot them with bird shot out of shotguns
Attempt to catch them with corn, peas, dough balls, etc... Kill all you catch.
Or, if you want to go non lethal, you can place some pellets in a piece of pantyhose, tie it to a hook and then catch a few of the carp with that rig. The carp will then shy away from eating your pellets as they will be conditioned as a no no...

What percentage of each sunfish species did you stock, you mentioned BG, HBG and RES. If you stocked a high percentage as compared to BG with HBG or RES, then you may be facing a shortage in forage as HBG are generally 90-95% male(depending on the cross), this means they lack the ability to reproduce at the rate regular BG do. RES are a great addition to ponds, but because of their much lower reproductive rate, generally only spawn once a year as opposed to BG who spawn multiple times a year. Too many HBG or RES being stocked initially can lead to a lack of forage for LMB.

At 4 years, you're nearing if not already to the point where you need to start thinning your bass out. LMB have a tendency to over reproduce, over eating their food source and then they tend to stunt, topping out in the 12-14" range. This is fine if you are focusing on sunfish as the many LMB help control their numbers, producing less competition among the remaining sunfish for food and faster growth rates. I would recommend you start keeping a catch log on all fish caught. Record the species, its weight and its length. Then you can calculate the relative weights and see where you stand...

All this depends on your goals though... What are you looking to achieve, so the real experts on here can give you some good advice.