Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations LMB PSD 88% Bream PSD 80%

I have a 3 acre retention pond in North FL. My goal is to have a LMB heavy pond to control trash fish: bowfin, FHCF, & common carp. I have good data for LMB & only a good SWAG for bream. Please do not ask about my attempts at using a seine.

LMB 12" or greater PSD =88% LMB RSD 15" or greater= 32% 40 Total fish caught over the past year.

I do not enjoy fishing. I like to catch fish. Bream are my sport fish. They are easy to catch & put up a nice battle for their size. I must target bream smaller than 6" to catch them. The normal fish is 6" & above. I have kept no formal data but a good SWAG for bream : PSD 6" or greater 80% RSD 8" or greater 15% I love those RES.

Your thoughts? Comments? Predictions for the comming years?

I have very rarely seen nor been able to catch LMB less than 10". What is the most likely reason? Big LMB eating smaller LMB? Very poor spawning success? The pond has little structure, sand & clay bottom, no gravel, rather steep sides. All of above?

I will not ask what happened but a seine survey will give you the low end (size) data you need to draw a valid conclusion. A creel survey (fish caught) with 40 fish over a year out of 3 acres is very small sample size and subject to large error factor. Further it does not survey small fish and possible reproduction/yoy. I would not want to guess on that limited info.

It would be very hard to give any advice on a water body with steep sides that has been seined for it's sampling technique and limited creel results. The seining sample will not be represenative of the population, due to many fish will reside in deep water since there is little shoreline habitat present, by your description. Sportfish will be successfull spawning on hard sand bottom, but not on clay. Most of those ponds have successful spawning, but have no habitat to grow and harbor forage fish, so they have poor YOY survival. Homeowners Associations and property owners keep them so clean of vegetation, little fish get wiped out shortly after they hatch.

It sounds like you have some fish to catch for sport, what is your goal or objectives? Do you own this lake or is it part of a housing development. Remember, retention ponds are designed (by the developer to satisfy DEP and the St Johns River Water Management District) to take in bad water, so any fishery is always at risk of being wiped out. I ran the FWC Jacksonville Field Lab and over saw the 100+ acres of Urban Ponds throughout the city for 10+ years, so I know what you have and its potentials. I lived in Mandarin on a similar lake that had 10 lbs bass and hand-size bluegill in it, only because there were no houses on half the lake and the aquatic vegetation was plentiful along that shoreline. I still had neighbors complain because I did not keep my shore "clean" (weed free), I only cleared bank access points. The funny (or sad) thing is, those retention ponds last a lot longer and do a much better job of improving water quality if vegetation is left in them! If you want some more information go to: Florida Pond Management Book I put that together before I left the agency. If you have any other questions, you can E-Mail me and I'll be happy to help.

Good luck!

This is a clay bottom and those are BG beds. They have been producing BG since 1960. I added the gravel in 1990. The second pic is of a CNBG on one of the beds.





Here is a pic of seining a steep sided pond. While a pond with steep sides is not as easy to seine and the data is generally not as complete - it still provides valuable data .

Clay bottom in my pond produces successful BG, RES, and LMB spawns. Of course, IMO a "hard" clay bottom becomes soft after water is added.

Most of the stuff I see in North Central Texas is sandy loam. The male LMB and BG pretty well removes the sand until he has a solid clay nest. They certainly spawn OK on the clay in my area.