Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Looking for some pointers

Hi im new here and looking for a little help to get some bigger bass. I just bought a house that shares a 10 acre lake with 2 other houses. The lake is only 10 feet deep at most and is only 15 years old so im not sure if that might be a factor. Ive lived there for about a month now and every bass i catch is about 2-3 pounds and maybe 12-16 inches. Ive easily caught a few hundred bass in the time ive fished but have yet to catch any of significant size although i can say i have only caught like 5 or 6 less then 10-12 inches. There are not really many bluegills but plenty of sun fish i think. I see tons of sunfish frys walking down the shore. I dont think there is any catfish really maybe only a couple at most. I cant really run a lure more then 3-5 feet of i snag weeds also. By the way i live in north east ohio if that helps. Any feed back on how to get the bass bigger would help TY.

It sounds like the lake is bass-heavy - almost guaranteed it is. if you've caught a few hundred bass in a short time period, from a ten-acre lake, there are too many bass in that lake for optimal bass growth. The bass aren't going to get much if any bigger until you thin them out.

There are two ways to thin them out. You can simply keep a bunch, as in at least ten per acre or more likely twenty, making sure to keep a record of how many you take out and also noting if you see any change in body shape (going from skinny, which I'm guessing they all are at the moment, to fatter, as you get them thinned). You would want to factor in how much fishing pressure the lake gets from anglers besides yourself, and whether those anglers are keeping any bass; initially you would probably need to take out at least 15 pounds of bass per acre, possibly twenty or more, this year; then you would note whether that seemed to be about the right number or if the bass got too scarce and the bluegill population exploded, etc., and come up with an annual harvest target per acre, probably around ten pounds per acre per year, though I may be low on this figure (chime in Greg and other bass experts).

The other option would be to stock northern pike or tiger muskie, two to five per acre, 10-12" each so they don't get eaten. The esocids might take a little longer to thin out the bass initially, but the upside to this approach is that as long as they are in the pond they will keep the bass, and bluegill, thinned to the point that they grow much faster and larger than they would have otherwise. If the lake has yellow perch and they're a target of anyone who regularly fishes the lake, this option might not be the right one as pike/muskie can negatively affect the average size of perch in a lake. But they'll boost the size of the bass and bluegill dramatically.

Either method could work. But you've got to thin those bass if you want some large ones.

If the fish you are catching are 12" - 16" and weigh 2 to 3 pounds, they seem healthy to me. That's a healthy weight to length ratio. I would keep fishing and record their length/weight before I'd make any judgements. You've only been there a month. I would change fishing tactics first. I know you've already have caught a bunch of fish and it would seem like you would have caught a big one by now just by catching that many fish. What baits are you using, what time of day, depth, etc. A lake that big with fish as healthy as it sounds, you can be sure there are some big ones in there somewhere.

Well as for who actually does any fishing there its pretty much just me. The only other person I have seen fishing is the neighbors 11 year old son using a bamboo pole so.... I was pretty sure its over populated with bass and that's no problem since I am really hungry I will definitely start removing the ones I catch. I have pretty much been reading about pond management like all day today. I read it might be a good idea to possibly add some big BG and maybe a few 5 pound LMB. We don't have any yellow perch although i would like them but i don't want them to compete with the bass for food if that will slow there growth. Also there is no crappie or rock bass or any thing else with a mouth big enough to really compete with the bass. I have seen about 3-4 carp but I have only seen them a couple times and they are maybe in the 10 pound range not the 20+ pounders I am use to seeing in lakes. Also the lake has no feeders or aerators. The bass seem to be long enough to have some weight to them but they just don't have the belly to add that extra weight I am looking for. Also my first day of fishing the lake I caught around 45-50 bass in about 8-9 hours with my go to lure (white grubs with 1/4 oz head) but it didn't seem so bad since i usually will get 3-4 times more fish with those then any other lure in ponds around here.

Small bait = small fish (usually). I would change baits if your looking for larger fish. If you want numbers what you're doing is fine. Harvesting will always help the growth of the remaining fish. It sounds like there are plenty and harvesting some won't hurt a thing.

Hatrix, I should add that I was going on the assumption that you might have overestimated the weight of the bass you're catching. A 12" bass with an average Wr will weigh closer to one pound than two, so I was estimating that you have been catching one to two pound bass, perhaps a three-pounder here and there. I wouldn't think three-pounders would be common with that many bass in a pond that size. Have you been weighing them? If so, two pounds for 12" is extremely good body condition, and they may not need thinning much, though they definitely will grow faster if some are removed. I don't think I've ever seen a 12" bass that weighed two pounds.

If I'm correct and you've just been estimating their weights, you probably don't have many bass over three pounds in the pond right now, likely no more than a handful if that. You might not have a single bass over four pounds in the whole pond. But thinning them, by either method, will result in more forage for the remaining bass, and they'll grow far faster, and bigger, than they are now.

Okay, just re-read your last post. Do you know if the carp are grass carp or common carp? If they're sterile grass carp, disregard the rest of this message. If they're common carp...

You will want to keep a very close eye on them. It might not hurt even to fish for them one day with doughballs, just to get an idea of how prevalent they are. Right now they're probably not ubiquitous due to the large number of bass in the lake. But getting the bass to the optimal level for their growth, could easily allow the carp to explode and take over the lake. There's a guy that posted on here about a month ago who has a lake over two hundred acres that's ninety percent carp. He put an underwater camera in the middle of it and only recorded like two bass in two or three days of taping, and thousands of carp. So obviously that's what you want to avoid.

Since you have the carp, I would encourage you to give serious thought to getting some esocids in there. You can still cull bass to get them thinned quicker, but having the pike or muskie in there will keep the carp from taking over. Multiple state game and fish agencies have used pike and/or muskie to reclaim lakes overrun with carp; in this case you would be stocking them to prevent that from happening (though they would also help you achieve your goal of thinning the bass, and keeping them thinned). Think of them as a natural balancing agent within the pond, the pond enforcers if you will. Just my two cents.

I'm not sure you have a bass problem. You say it has never been fished and you can expect the bite to slow down as the fish wise up. And, they do wise up.

The action I would take is to log every fish I catch along with their length and weight. If you are correct about 2-3 pounds and 12 to 16 inches, the bass are doing nicely.

I would also try to identify the types of sunfish and fry that you have. Have you caught any spawning size sunfish? Post some pics here and they can be identified.

I would not start eliminating fish until I had analyzed the whole picture. Of course, I don't think it would hurt to drop some of them in hot grease.