Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Skinny bass, Fat Cats

I have a 6 acre pond varying from 3' to a max of 16', crystal clear water and I replentish when needed from a dedicated well. My problem is that I catch lots of bass, lots of them, but they're either 8" to 12" or 5 pounds and up (not a lot of them fit into this category). Most of the smaller bass are rather skinny with mostly empty stomachs. We dont catch many 12" to 18" bass at all. So its basically big or small. Wazzup? On the other hand the CC population seems to be 4-5 pounds up to 10 pounds and all have stuffed bellies. The HBG and BG's dont get much size either, 7" to 8" is the tops with most in the 5" range and many smaller ones are caught. I dont feed or aereate. Are the CC eating all the foreage that the bass should be feeding on? Please help me solve this problem. I would like the pond to produce both large bass and large bluegill. I like to fish for cats, but if they're interrupting the food chain I guess I could remove them. We also have what seems to be a large population of snapping turtles (The biggest one I've seen is huge, probably 20" in length).

You are missing several years class of bass. The biguns are eating them. A bass performs best when it eats something that is 1/3 it's size. Your larger BG are also fitting in their mouths.

I expect the fat cats are also mopping up on everything they can catch. What are their bellies stuffed with?

Never have cleaned one to see what's inside, but they are fat and sassy, bulging bellies!

Since you don't feed, the cats seem to be doing OK on their own. The BG would probably disagree with that statement. I believe I would take a look inside of them.

I am down to only about a dozen cats in what is supposed to be a 1 acre pond. Lack of rain has shrunk it by 1/2. I'm slowly cutting the cats numbers down by letting my Grandson catch them. He enjoys digging around in their insides to see what they eat.

Ok this is what is going on in you pond. You probabaly haven't removed enough bass over the years and there are so many of them in there that they ran out of food. The bass that are big and theres probabaly on two or three of them in the whole pond, Have been surviving by eating some of the smaller bass. All of the bass in the pond have stunted out from lack of food and only get enough each year to survive. It takes 10 pounds of forage for a bass to gain one pound. The catfish eat lots of different things plus bluegill and other fish they can fit in their mouth. If you want the pond balance you need to start taking out some of the smaller 8-12" bass and some of the catfish. Maybe even add some more bluegill or some other type of forage like threadfin shad. Just my 2 cents worth but ive been dealing with a pond in the same situation and almost have it straightened out.

Bassman, first off I want to say that your avatar is pretty dang funny. Like Dave said you are missing some year classes of LMB. I would also venture a guess that you are overpopulated with the 8"-12" LMB. My first instinct would be to start removing the stunted 8-12 inch LMB. That won't do much for your BG size but that should help put some size on the remaining LMB and bring your pond back into ballance.

As far as your BG go 7-8 inches isn't all that bad IMO. It's hard to manage for big LMB and big BG. Most pondmeisters find it more reasonable to pick one or the other, and some myself included would just like a balanced pond.

If it's possible to feed your fish that is a great option to help take some pressure off the natural food chain. You could add some size to your BG and give your CC an alternate food source. CC and BG will be your main eaters of pelleted feed, but your LMB will benefit from increased production from you BG and less demand on the BG from the CC.

Can you provide details on the BG population caught and/or seen? You indicated "The HBG and BG's dont get much size either, 7" to 8" is the tops with most in the 5" range and many smaller ones are caught."

Very clear water may mean little productivity (base of the food chain missing). Can you provide if you have a plankton bloom at all?

You are missing size classes of LMB not necessarily year classes. Some of those 12 in. LMB may be 4 or 5 years old and just be stunted. I agree that you are probably experiencing classic LMB crowding. The question is how do you fix the problem and it may not be just by removing LMB although that should help.

Can you provide harvest info for the last couple of years?

First of all, thanks for all the input! i"ll try to answer your questions and hopefully we can get started improving the quality of the fish. Okay, here goes. I've only owned the pond 2 years and am very inexperienced in pond management. There are few BG and HBG caught that go 7-8".The majority are 5" and down. I have removed very few fish as I "catch and release" virtually everything. I took out probably a dozen CC and probably the same number of LMB last year to eat. I thought that they would "grow up" and become large bass. We havnt removed any BG or HBG. We also have a smaller population of GSF that are fun to catch also. As far as an plankton bloom, I really dont know what to look for concerning this. When the water gets heated in July and August, there has been a large growth of FA each year. My buddies said to treat with granular copper sulfate and that took care of it. The water has stayed virtually clear all year except when the FA took off. We also have a very nasty Eurasian Watermilfoil infestation that I plan to treat with 100# of navigate per acre when the water warms and it starts growing. I believe that there are a lot of large (5# + here in Indiana is what I consider large LMB. Am I wrong here? As I said before, when I fish for LMB, I catch many in the 12" range, and maybe 1 or 2 per week 5# and up with the largest I've taken being an 8.5# fish. I really appreciate the huge amount of knowledge that so many of you possess. I'm an ol' farm boy and I'm willing to learn and I really want to improve the quality of the fish in the pond. Thanks a million in advance!

One thing I forgot to mention also, the pond is 15 years old and has seems to have pretty good circulation and movement of water. It hadnt been treated or taken care of in 3 years prior to my purchasing the property.

Dang, I forgot to mention there's Black Crappie in the pond also. Dont seem to be a lot of them, but the ones I catch are large, 12"+, largest being 16". My son in law an I also saw one bass we figured was 10#+ and around 25-27", that sucker was a monster. I also have grass carp, they seem to be dying off, I have found 3 dead ones in the past year that were 3'+. Hope this helps also.

The overpopulation of bass has been keeping the crappie numbers in check. Take out every crappie you catch because once the number of bass has been reduced they could become a problem.

Will do! From now on crappie = dinner.

I was just doing some reading on this site. When I treat the pond for Navigate for the milfoil, will this produce a plankton bloom due to the decaying matter? I may have misinterpreted the statement, but if it does, thats a good thing, right??

It all depends on your current water clarity/quality. It could increase your nutrient load to uncomfortable or even dangerous levels. As an ol' farm boy, I'm sure you understand about the consequences of over fertilization. The dying and dead plants increase the phytoplankton level of the water. Phyto emits oxygen during the day and consumes it at night or under cloudy conditions. If it consumes too much of the oxygen you have what we call a DO crash that makes things really tough on fish. In other words they suffocate.

How is your water quality now? Your visibility should, optimally, be between 18 and 24 inches. Make a sechi disk. That's no more than a white disk. I use the top of a white plastic bucket. Cut a hole in it and pass a string though the hole. Tie a weight onto the bottom and lower it into the pond. Measure the point at which it disappears.

To be careful, only do 1/3 or so of the pond at a time. That gives fish somewhere else to go.

Actually, herbicides usage can be a viscous cycle. You kill plants that create fertilizer that creates more plants.

You have to kill carefully and stay on top of the situation. Try to maintain about 20 to 25% plant cover for small fish to hide in.

Dave, the water here is crystal clear. I can see the bottom where its 4-5 feet deep now.. Thanks for your input. Very good info.

That means that you have very little of the phytoplankton. Phyto, mictoscopic plants, is the basis of the food chain. They are fed on by zoo plankton, microscopic animals. The zoo is eaten by tiny bugs which are eaten by larger bugs and small fish fry. Things like that keep happening up the food chain until you fillet a bigun.

Without phyto you have an essentially sterile pond where fry have a tough time surviving.

The clear water is what allows the weeds to proliferate.

AFTER you get the salad under control, you may need to look into fertilizing.

How will I judge how many 12 range bass to take out? I fish pretty much every day. If I'm out for a couple of hours I may catch a 12-16 or more 12" range LMB when they're biting well and half that smaller bass. Maybe once or twice a week I will haul in a 3-5# or better From my reading, I gather that I have to take out so many per acre. The pond is 5 acres, average depth overall is 6'. I have tons and tons of BG and HBG, you can catch them till you get tired of catching them one right after another. One other point of interest. When I fish for CC, I mostly use hotdogs for bait. I am catching as many LGB as CC with this bait....seems odd to me. Can anyone give me a good handle on a number of LMB I should remove?

It sounds like you have a stock pile of 12" range bass. These bass are stunting at around that size. They don't grow any larger so they feed very heavily on 3" to 5" sunfish but none larger. They deplete their food supply quickly and stay stunted. The sunfish that get a little bigger have no larger bass to thin them out which means they are over populated as well and stunted. I would work on removing about 50 lbs of bass per acre. This would be around 300 bass from your pond. This should allow more food for your bass to grow, enabling them to reach larger sizes to better manage your sunfish population cutting back on their stunting as well.

Just keep on chunkin and windin until you don't catch any runts. You can't catch them all.

CJBS2003, 50 lbs per acre seems like a lot. I always heard somewhere between 20-30 lbs per acre per year. Did you suggest such a large number to get his pond back into balance quickly? Then once it's in balance remove the usual 20-30 lbs per acre per year?

I don't think there is any way to give a firm number on removing the LMB. They are also spawning as you are culling. That's why I say to just keep fishing until your average catch size increases measurably.

Ray Scott says cull every bass you catch that is under 12 to 13 inches after the second year of stocking.

All ponds are different but my pond is five acres and it was very overcrowded with 8-12" bass. I started taking them out in January of 2008 and have removed 185 8-12" bass since then. At first I took out any fish under 12".Now that they have started putting on weight and lenght I cull by the individual fish. If its fat and healthy no matter what lenght i throw it back. If its under weight I take it out. I would think around 175-200 bass would be around the number that needs to be taken out.

So basically you boys are saying that the LMB are overcrowded and need to be reduced allowing the larger fish to increase in size. Will the stunted bass begin to grow also and fill the void where I dont have virtually any bass 12-18"? Or will the new spawns grow and not be stunted? Probably a stupid question, but I'm just trying to grasp the concept.I will start removing 8-12" LMB immediately. What kind of time frame are we looking at to see improvment? Also. should I start removing the CC? Thanks so much for all your comments and information. I think I may be "hooked" on this site!!

Yup, that was my thinking...

One approach is to monitor CPUE. Has the CPUE (catch per unit effort = time needed to catch the same # of fish) gone down? If so how much ? The numbers of fish ( 10 lbs to 50 lbs) per acre depends on the ponds fertility/productivity. If it starts getting more difficult to catch lots of 10-12 inch LMB then cut back on removing them like you have.

Another approach is to watch for improvement in Wr (relative weight). Have you been keeping that type of info?

A third method is to do a seine survey as per Swingle to see if you have lots of 3 in BG, along with yoy BG and LMB. If those #s are right it means you are approaching balance.

All 3 plus visual and creel info should be enough to give a solid answer. Based on your comments I think you may be closer than you think to balance.

In a very clear pond like you described you may only have 25-30 lbs of LMB per acre. If so you can't take out more than that. In a very fertile pond you could have 125 Lbs of LMB per acre. So it depends. No clear cut rule of LMB lbs per acre can be given without lots of good data.

Looks like I have to start keeping a log of the fish I'm catching. How is Wr calculated? From catch experience, the kids and such are catching a LOT of 3" BG and HBG, also they can be seen in the shallows while spawning. Just and educated guess, but I would say we have a fairly large population of 3" fish. We can do a seine survey when it warms up to validate this. One thing I've seen this early spring is that the 6-8" LMB I've caught are filled out while the 12" range have a pretty empty belly, that is if you run a finger along the bottom side, it doesnt indicate a full stomach. Does this show the 12" class are stunted? I never imagined there was so much information to be gained as you fellows are giving me! I'm learning with every post and its much appreciated! TYVM
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