Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations How soon to implement a LMB harvest program?

I have a fairly new pond in Northwest Texas and was wondering what your thoughts are as to when LMB need to start being harvested. My ultimate goal with this pond is to have a trophy LMB lake. A little background info on the pond:

Pond was built in the summer of 2007 and the rains filled it up immediately after construction.

The pond measures 3.5+ acres. I would estimate that 1 acre is deeper water - 5' to 20' deep. The balance of the pond (~2.5 acres) is thick standing mesquites in anywhere from 1' to 5' of water with an 8' deep creek channel winding through the "mesquite flat".

Pond was stocked in March 2008 with 600 x 3" Redear Sunfish, 2,500 x 3" CNBG, 300 x 3" LMB (northern strain), and 35 pounds of Fathead Minnows.

Water clarity is 18" - 24" and the pond has never been fertilized. I have not done any soil or water testing.

Just this past week, I caught the first LMB out of this pond. 6 were caught and measured between 12" and 15" and are quite possibly the fattest bass I have ever caught. I did not weigh any of them but would guess they averaged at between 1.5 and 2 lbs. I will be taking a scale with me on the next trip up there to obtain more definitive data.

I introduced a supplemental feeding program for the bluegill approximately 6 weeks ago.

We were catching hundreds of 2" to 5" CNBG and RES on fly rods in early June, but haven't had the fly rod out since then.

I do plan on stocking Tilapia next spring to provide additional forage for the LMB.

My question is, at what point should I begin to implement a harvest program for the LMB? I will not be harvesting them to eat, but strictly from a management perspective. I wouldn't assume that one would need to be implemented this early in the "game" but I may be wrong. Any thoughts and/or comments are welcome!

reno4648, welcome to the forum!

Sounds like you have a great pond...

My first recommendation is to go to http://www.pondboss.com/books.html and purchase "Raising Trophy Bass" and "Perfect Pond... Want One?" It'll easily be the best $51.05 you ever spent... Also consider subscribing to the magazine if you haven't already. It really is the best magazine I have ever had a subscription too and I have subscribed to a lot of magazines!

Most recommendations are to start a culling program sometime in year 4 or 5... This just all depends. If you are not familiar with Relative Weight or Wr. It is a process of tracking a bass's or any other fishes health by comparing its weight to length ratio to a standard. Buy yourself an accurate scale to weigh your bass with, a reasonable priced food scale from Wal-Mart or Target often works well. Measure your bass and compare the weights and lengths to a Wr chart. If you do a search on the forum, you can locate much information on that.(and lots of other good info for that matter)

The addition of tilapia would certainly help for many reasons... You may also look into stocking large adult golden shiners before the bass get too big and the successful stocking of them is much more difficult. You can also consider stocking threadfin shad as well. Those two species also help bass grow to great sizes.

One good thing is that with 3.5 acres, 300 original stocker bass was no too many so you aren't bass heavy from the beginning. Track your Wr on the bass and in a year or so, start culling some of the thinner bass. Let's see what others have to say...

"Raising Trophy Bass" has better advice than I can give.

IIRC, Bob isn't to keen on removing initial stockers, unless over stocked (which you didn't). If I was you, I would start high grading their offspring at a year or so of age. Did you get a bass spawn this year?

I would probably start culling next Fall(2010) or after the 2nd year of stocking. Take out anything that is less than 12 inches the first time. Then 13 the next year. Don't worry. You won't be able to catch them all or even half of them. Here's the deal. Your bass are now unbelievably fat due to the abundance of forage. However, they can make a pretty heavy dent in the groceries. That's when you get a bass heavy/forage light situation . The smaller bass mop up on the BG that you need to grow bigger to spawn and become food for the original bass as they grow. Adding the tilapia will really help.

Cj advice on Wr is a good one. I also suggest you attend the upcoming PB conference the wealth of information you will gain is well worth the money.

You will want to start right away, possibly. When running your Wr you might seem some slaggers in the original stock. Get rid of them. I disgaree about it not being too many. In the traditional sense not too many but for trophy bass it is too many so just look over the bass and if you see some not doing as well pull them.

Now when to really begin....next fall as Dave stated you will have decent size year two bass pull a godo % of these maybe have a harvest plan on 15 lbs/acre or 50 lbs. Year 2011 bump this to about 100 lbs. per year. ALso about his time worth getting a good bioloigst to analysis the pond if you have unanswereed questions. All this advice is for trophy bass goals. Of course as mentioned other mgmt includes golden shiners, threadfin shad, fertilizaiton, fish feeeding etc. will be importnat as well.

You'll have to define "trophy bass," and if you are looking to produce some double-digit fish then my advise is to stock some adult or advanced fingerling florida or florida hybrid strain largemouth bass into your existing population.

Welcome to Pond Boss Reno, we're glad you found us. Post any photos you have of your pond, we like photos.

Here's a good link to a Pond Boss Article on just this subject... It may help you decide how to manage your bass.

I like to follow Ray Scotts advice. After the 2nd year, take out bass 13" and under until you figure that you have taken enough. Then keep taking them out.

dang Cj where did you dig tha up, it is abotu 6 years old I would guess.

Thanks for all of the information. It seems like everyone has their own varying ideas about what to do. It looks like the most sensible thing to do would be to keep an eye on the Wr charts, and begin harvesting bass which are under-performing.

Next trip up there I will try to get some pictures of the pond for you all to see.

reno you got it figured out, how agressive the harvest depends on how fast you want them to grow vs. catch rates.

Greg, http://www.bassresource.com must have an agreement with Pond Boss in that they publish some of the PB articles on their site. It is how I originally found PB. They have lots of old PB articles archived...