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

I have a 1/4 acre pond which was freshly dug this last winter. It was filled up this past March and I started adding BG, (added around 350 from 3-6inch) and then proceded to add a few LMB in the 1-3 pond range. But only added around 20 fish total. BG had a great spawn and added another 3lbs of fathead minnows along with any left overs from fishing trips. I also added a windpowerd aeration and the water looks very healthy. Although I can not catch any thing but BG I assumed the Bass was in full buffet. Wrong! I found 1 or 2 fish dead over the past 2 months. Then I added another bass yesterday around the 4lb mark and went to find another 3lb bass almost dead and pulled him from the water to see such a skinny fish. Huge head and very skinny body dying. There is lots of action around the aeration pump and some slow growth of primrose.I just added 4lbs more of minnows. Am I way off on enough feed. The pond is not that big and the deepest part is around 14ft with tree structure. Yes the drought has it about 3.5 ft low but still plenty of good looking water. I live in East Texas and hope to survive the next few months before any rain sets in. Is there any such thing as too much forage for so little bass?

I hate to see a request for help go unanswered so I will throw some ideas out. First, to find 2 or 3 fish dead out of 20 stocked is not that unusual especially if they had their jaw jerked before stocking.

If it turns out you do more than normal post stocking/angling mortality, the first thing I would do is check the water quality. You stated there appears to be plenty of food for the bass, yet they are still skinny so I would suspect something is stressing them. Stressed fish generally don't feed well. IMO you added a lot of fish mass for 1/4 acre of new water. I know new aquariums stocked too quickly can suffer toxic levels of ammonia. Perhaps something similar is occurring in you pond? Low dissolved O2 crashes are also known to selectively kill the largest fish. I hope this helps a little. Good Luck

IBF,

Always good to read posts from fellow East Texans! Yes, we need rain, lots of rain!

Reading your info, it sounds to me like you may be somewhat fish bio mass heavy as suggested by JayMan above. If the pond is down 3.5 feet, it is presumably somewhat less than a 1/4 acre now in surface area and certainly less than full capacity in total water volume.

A good guideline that is often used by A&M and Texas Parks & Wildlife for our ponds is stocking no more than 100 pounds of predators per acre. Also BG stocking rates are generally recommended at or below 1000 per acre for small BG.

The situation you described is something like 160 pounds per acre of adult predators and 1400 adult BG per acre at stocking...that's assuming 1/4 acre which is probably somewhat less now. So, according to those numbers and allowing for spawning of LMB and BG, you might be on the high side in fish bio mass. Lots of action around the aeration pump might also be an indicator of low DO due to the amount of fish in the pond.

The numbers are not huge or orders of magnitude out of line with the guidelines, but with the drought, low water levels, and limited flushing of water to improve water quality, could be a factor in what you are seeing.

Like a lot of Texas, we need some really good rains for our ponds. In my area, in the absence of a tropical event, the good rains won't be here for at least two or three months yet and with the heat our ponds will continue to loose water at high evaporation rates, which may exacerbate problems further.

Thank Ya'll for the any response as Im getting discouraged as any one would. The 4lb LMB I added 2 days ago is now dead. Only the larger fish seem to die as Meadowlark mentioned. I don't know what to do at this point, clean aerated water I persumed would survive the heat, thus not so far. Amonia levels?Is there a chemical to decrease that? I know for a fact that the larger bass was stocked back in April and have lived this far until now. But extremly undernurished. The appearence of the BG seem to be normal. Should I just wait it out and plan on trying to restock this fall. I only want 20-30 Bass and grow them Big. Am I on the right frame of mind, didn't want to overload just have fat happy 2dozen?

Should I attemp to remove some BG?

Also the Koenders windmill powerd air is doing plenty, it said it was good up to a 1 acre surface, heck I'm a 1/4 acre at the most, the water seems good enough to drink almost.

Meadowlark is correct in his assessment, but there is more. Not only are you heavy on the predator side, you probably didn't handle those bass in the best way possible. Even if they are handled properly, with plenty of room in aerated/oxygenated haul tanks, with salt and antibiotics, there are other issues. Often, with larger bass, moving them from one environment to another proves fatal. If you get past the moving part, the next obstacle is the fact you took an adult fish from an environment where it grew up and moved it into a brand new situation. Fish don't have the ability to think. They respond to instinct and conditioning. For example, if we take a bass from a big public lake, where it's used to deep water, consistent temperature and all the shad it can eat, and move it into a small pond with rapid temperature changes and bluegill hiding in cover, that bass may simply not make the change. Too much change in its conditioning. People assume an adult fish moved from one body of water to another, will make it, provided the fish is handled properly. That just isn't the case. That's one big reason many biologists recommend stocking fingerling fish into a new pond, and allowing them to grow up in that environment.
So, bottom line is this...when you move large bass from one waterbody to another, they must have abundant forage fish, not be overstocked for the existing food chain, and be handled with the utmost of care.
Even when all three of these parameters are "perfect" there is no guarantee those bass will thrive, once introduced.
Realistically, some of the bass will die, others will lose weight, some will remain status quo, and another percentage will thrive.
That's the way it works.