Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose temperature tolerance in Small mouth Bass

My pond will be fairly large, but the size and depth are yet to be determined. At least 8 acres and 15 feet deep. Most likely it will be 10+ acres and close to 20 feet deep. I want to stock small mouth as the sole predator, but I am concerned that they may not tolerate the heat in southern minnesota. The pond will be completly ground water. It is being dug below the water table, there is no liner or clay layer becuase it is so deep. Does anyone know there temp range? Does this situation sound feasible?
Thank you for your time and expertise!

now to partialy answer my own question...
fishbase.org reports that the temp rang is up to 30 degrees centegrad, which converts to about 86 in farinheit. SO I think they would be fine? Anyone agree or disagree? thanks

A 8-10 acre pond should have plenty of cool deeper water even with a diffuser. 86 degrees is very warm water. I am in Green Bay and we are both in a cool enough climate by far for smallmouth bass. They exist much farther south. They do well here even in smaller bodies of water.

I have been raising SMB since 1991 in an 8'deep, 1/3acre pond in NW Ohio. No problem for you in S. MN. Surface water temperatures get to 90F for short periods (a few days) during July and August. With some fairly dense weed cover or depth the fish will seek cooler areas. I believe that there are some strains of SMB that been acclimatized to tolerate a little warmer water.

Thanks guys, as ussual Pond boss has laid all my fears to rest. Now, back to dreaming of 21 inch "smallies"!

We are in southeastern South Dakota and have no problem with both largemouth and smallmouth. We actually catch more smallmouth than largemouth. You might consider adding both to your lake. Both species do well together. What smallmouth tend not to do is reproduce well in the presence of largemouth. At least in our case, what this means is that we have to stock smallmouth as their form of reproduction. In a small lake, that doesn't seem to be much of a problem. We never remove either species to eat as we need them as predators.

I agree Norm, SMB with LMB in small water bodies have a hard time carrying off a successful spawn. Restocking fingerlings or juveniles is a good way to perpetuate the SMB.

Personaly I was planning on one or the other. I will have plenty of elbow greese to manage my pond by not plenty of money.
Do SMB spawn well in the presence of blugills? or do BG drive bass off nests for eggs?
Do SMB lose out against LMB for nest sites or forage or something else?

TyW33 Lakedoctor is your main guy for an experienced answer for SMB in combination with Bgill. But I haven't seen him post much lately.

If bgill populations are normal and not overabundant there should be very little problem with Bgill driving SMB off nests. However SMB are not real reliable at producing lots of young each year. Weather plays a big role here. Also predation of fry even by abundant bgill can drastically depelete the already low fry densites from only one or two successful nests. SMB fry are quite dark in comparison which makes them easier targets. Some yrs you will get little or no recruitment even with spawning adults alone in the pond. Then this will be a good opportunity for the bgill to get "ahead" of the bass. You may have to supplimentally stock SMB or manually thin YOY bgill when this happens.

I think in small water bodies LMB drive the SMB males off the nest sites and then the LMB uses the pre-dug nest for himself. In larger water bodies there is enough diversity and ample spawning sites available that some of the SMB do not get driven off the nest and then produce a sussessful spawn.

Thanks, I found a study done by the wisconsin DNR on SMB spawning and recruitement. They taged tons of fish in a small lake that had zero migration. They came up with estimates on SMB reproduction, I still need to read the rest of it.
There was another paper that used genetic testing to see what percentage of nesting SMB males fathered the YOY. It was very low, around 5% I beleive. That means most of the nesting males didn't contribute to the year class.
It makes you think twice about relying on SMB.

To Norm Kopecky: Norm, could you give some more details about the size/depth of your lake, and the presence of underwater structure (like what the bottom is made of)?

I've recently stocked SMB in my lake that has an existing LMB population. My lake is mostly silt bottom and ranges from 3-5' to over 15' depth, and around 7 acres. I've been creating a lot of rock beds which crayfish have taken to, and am putting in more. I'm really trying to make sure I have areas where the SMB will spawn (as well as feed on crayfish).

Sunil – I’ll wait and see if Norm posts an answer to your specific question. If not, I have a copy of the article he wrote for a competitor’s pond management magazine and a map of his big pond, and I can perhaps answer some of those specifics. However, hopefully he’ll spot this and answer.

I can add some additional information on smallmouths and their habitat. Whenever we are using a hill pond (dammed pond) for smallmouth bass, we try to do a lot of rock work. We have quite a bit of natural field stone around here, and they often were picked and stacked in piles around the fields. These rocks tend to range from perhaps 6 inches in diameter to a couple of feet or more. The smaller ones (perhaps 6-12 inches) are probably the ones we move most commonly.

Obviously, one of the best places for placing these rocks is on the face of the dam. We run them from well above the water line down to pretty deep water. That helps prevent wind and wave erosion, and also provides good habitat. Also, the smallmouths will use rocks in pretty deep water during the heat of summer. We also run rocks out from shoreline in a linear manner, often on points. Again, we try to go from shallow to deep water so the smallies can use various depths at different times of year. Finally, creating rock islands or humps that will be underwater, or putting rocks over natural islands/humps, is another good technique.

The adult smallmouths like to hang near rocks a lot of the time. I don’t think the rocks are necessary for adults, but they sure like them if they are present.

I do think that rocky habitat is a key for survival of young smallmouth bass. The small (half inch to 1 inch youngsters) fry/fingerlings really seem to need rock habitat for survival. After the males no longer guard the school of youngsters, they will congregate on rocky habitat. This is the stage when the fry/fingerlings are still pitch black (the source of the name “black bass”). They are very visible at this time.

When I worked in KS about 20 years ago, we often had to put in spawning structures for smallmouths to spawn in ponds that had no rocky habitat. We would take those heavy rubber feed tubs that are about 18 to 24 inches wide, fill them with gravel (perhaps the ¼ to 1 inch size), and then place them out in 3 feet of water or so (that varied, especially depending on pond water clarity). We even put out some worn-out tires, and filled them with gravel, but what the heck looks worse in a pond than an old tire???? Know what I mean?

I have made previous posts about smallmouth bass not competing very well with largemouth bass in a pond over the long run. Other people have added similar comments. Remember, that Norm is willing to stock larger (perhaps 8 inch?) smallmouth bass to keep up an adult population. I don’t blame him – the smallies sure are fun to catch!

Dave

Dave, thanks for that reply. I stocked about 100 SMB in the 2-3" range, and about 250 in the 4-7" range. The lake now has LMB, SMB, Cats, Crappie, Yellow Perch, Sunfish, Shiners, Fatheads, and (5) hybrid stipers. Only the SMB and the stripers are new species to the lake.

A man that managed the pond (land lease) starting from back in the '70s, and prior to our purchase, insists that he stocked SMB way back then. In the past 5 years we've owned it, I've never seen one. Hence my interest in hoping that the new SMBs can sustain themselves and reproduce given the long standing current residents.

Mostly my aim is a healthy & varied population of fish. Before I did a lot of various stockings over the past few months, I feel my lake had reached some type of natural balance.

I'll keep on the lookout for Norm's answer (or yours if he doesn't get back).

Thanks.
Sunil

"Male fitness, body size, and timing of reproduction in small mouth bass" by Wiegmannn et al.
In a 45-ha seepage lake the 1983 year class in 1986 had 1203 male smb. 3 years old was the youngest spawning observed and 7 years old was the oldest.From these 1203 males 329 spawned in their life time, 37 of those spawned twice. That means only 27.3% of males that make it to spawning age ever actualy spawn. If anyone want to read the paper I think I could e-mail it to you. Just post your request.

to TyW33: I'd love to get a copy of that paper.
Please email it to me.

Many thanks.
Sunil

D.Willis noted the affinity of SMB to rock - boulder habitat. I think they use the rock structures alot because crayfish live among the rocks. Since all sizes of SMB feed heavily on crayfish the affinity of SMB for rocky areas is logical.

Our pond area is a little over 5 acres with about 4 acres of water and the rest in the form of 8 islands. Since it has a good clay base, we could make a tremendous amound of bottom structure.

There is a company nearby that makes concrete blocks and have given us over 125 pallets of defective blocks. We put about 25 pallets of these blocks around a covered bridge and spread the rest around the lake. Our most common way of using them is the make a reef starting at the bank going out to deep water with about 10 pallets of blocks. These blocks are reasonably easy to handle and provide a tremendous amount of holes and small places for small fish, crayfish etc. to hide.

We have largemouths, smallmouths, white bass, wipers, rock bass, walleyes, yellow perch, channel catfish, bluegills, white and black crappie, pumkinseeds, green sunfish, freshwater drum, goldeyes and shorthead redhorse. After talking with Dr. Willis, I will add white suckers as an additional forage species.

All of these species do just fine together. What they do not do is reproduce well in the presence of all this competition or in this situation. That means we have to add fish as their form of reproduction.

TyW33 talked about having smallmouths as the sole predator. That might be OK as long as there aren't any bluegills, sunfish, crappie or rock bass in the lake. Dr. Willis can comment on this better than I but I don't think that smallmouths can controll the numbers of this shape of fish. Actually, most predators find it easier to eat a yellow perch shaped fish. Once you have bluegill shaped fish, I think you are committed to largemouths.

Dr. Willis is right, I think that any tubular shaped fish that is stocked under 8 inches is just expensive forage. That really is the problem with stocking smallmouths. It takes at least two years to get them that big which makes them expensive ($3-$5 dollars each in our area). I'm making a grow out pond just to provide a ready suppy of smallmouths. Realisticly, a person could just block off a part of their lake with netting to make a grow out pond.

If you have never caught smallmouths before, you can't believe how much harder they fight than largemouths. Smallmouths, wipers and goldeyes are tier 1 in fighting ability while largemouths are tier 2 fighters in my opinion.

Norm, thanks for the details on your lake. Another question please: Did you put the concrete blocks in when your lake was empty? If you did it when the lake was full, how did you go about getting them into the water?

I've made a lot of rock beds by taking 10-20 5lb field stones out on my Pond Master boat. Hell of a lot of trips. I've done some by going out on the ice.

That grow pond seems to be a great idea. Do you think you'll be able to get some smallies to spawn in the upcoming grow pond?

I love catching smallies. As I just stocked some, I've got a few years to hopefully see some size (if predation doesn't cleam 'em out).

Actually the pond had water in it when I put the blocks in. Remember, I had over 4 semi's full of blocks to deal with. I had a fork lift place them in bunches of 5-6 pallets in one spot. In the evening, I would throw 2-3 pallets of blocks into the lake (I had to return all of the pallets). This formed artificial reefs starting at the water's edge and went out to the deep water. I made the reefs so that they just touched the top of the water. If there was a spot that needed more blocks, I would bring over another pallet or two. These were mostly 8" blocks but were 6" or 10" blocks.

We have a bridge to an island and we placed 25 pallets of blocks under, around and on the approaaches to this bridge. This is where we get the very best fishing.

This pond is constantly under construction. As someone wants more dirt, the pond gets bigger. This way, I am able to make reefs that eventually end up in the middle of the lake. We also have 8 small islands in this lake. Usually, at least one side of these islands has 5-10 pallets of blocks that I made for use by crayfish.

We have a very high diversity of fish species in our lake. Most of these species reproduce by my stocking them. At least in our area, this is relatively inexpensive except for SMB. Dave Willis is raising them at South Dakota State and will give me some. I then have an 1/2 acre lake next to a 4 acre shallow wetland. This is where I will raise them to hopefully 8" in size. In this pond, anything much smaller than 8" is just expensive forage.

I also have pumkinseed sunfish, fathead minnows and blunthead minnows in this grow out pond. I also want to put grass pickeral in it just for the novelity. This whole area is in the Conservation Reserve Program.