Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Old pond has problems. Need help!!!

Hey, my Uncle moved into town and bought a house that had a 1 acre stocked pond from the previous owner. It has bluegill and largemouth bass. We have caught many bass. We can catch 15 an hour with minnows, 3 or 4 with lures. The bass are all about 10-12 inches, a few 14 and fairly skinny. This would make me think the pond has too many bass. All of the bluegill do appear to be pretty large but they do not bite. Any other pond it is easy to catch many bluegill but here they do not bite anything, even when spawning. I do not know what the problem is with them. I know i need to fish out some bass or put some minnows in or something. But i do not see why the bream would not be biting. We have only cought one bluegill ever and about 50 bass but i can see large ones swimming everywhere. Any help would be appreciated.

scubblescully,

Welcome to the Forum. You certainly have an interesting problem, BG that won't bite. From the sound of your post, it seems you have an overabundance of small bass...depending on your objectives for the pond that can be good or not. If you want larger bass, take out many of the small ones...all of those 12 inches and under. Consider adding some medium size BG (6 inches or so) after the bass numbers have been reduced.

I wonder if you have any "real" BG in this pond. Maybe it was stocked with hybrid BG at one time and those have died out/fished out and you were left with green sunfish offspring that the LMB have since devoured. Just doesn't make sense...you have tried a plain old worm on a hook and can't catch any BG at all? If you have a worm out there and can't catch a BG, you don't have BG that I'm familiar with.

Just for fun, while you are cleaning out those small bass, regularly take some fish food to the same spot in the pond at the same time every day if possible and throw some out...if you don't see BG within a couple of weeks, then you don't have any BG. Let us know more about these mysterious BG.

p.s. there is a recent post that relates to your problem and offers some solutions...see

http://www.pondboss.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=7;t=000233

Thanks for the help. The pond was stocked with all bluegill. One more question. Could i add more bluegill instead of taking out bass? Or would adding minnows help in any way?

IMHO you need to do all three, listed in the order of importance, i.e. 1)add medium sized BG 2)remove as many of the 12 inch and under bass as you can and 3) add 10 pounds or so of fatheads.

The size of the BG you add is important...they must be large enough to survive predation from the smaller LMB and begin reproducing right away. It sounds like you have a ready nearby source for those BG in another pond.

If you are happy with lots of small bass, then stay with the status quo, but if you want larger, heavier bass, then you have to remove many of those small ones.

The addition of fatheads is the least important of these steps and offers limited efficiency because they will be consumed quickly by the bass, especially if you do not have adequate structure for the FHs to hide in. If you have structure, some may reproduce helping your overall forage situation.