Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking Hartley's SMB Stocking

Consider Master Banks in...he owes me a visit anyhow. The four of us together could get into a whole heap of trouble.

Sounds like another regional PB opportunity in the making??

Looks like no more trips for me to Lincoln. You want to feed me plastic and last time, Bruce put some plastic in my teeth!

Rainman, I'll feed you some good venison back strap if you ever make it out to Virginia... We can then go to shooting range and I'll teach you target identification skills!

Rex:

If you do go out that way, swing thru Indiana. I'll help with the driving! I'll even throw some of those deer sticks in a cooler for snacks along the way.

CJ:

How long is the range? I could bring the new rifle....

I live right next to Quantico Marine Corp Base. They have a 1000 yard deck... That long enough for you?

That'll do for middlin' range. The bullet is still supersonic @ 2100 Yds, 4800+ ft. lb. of energy at the muzzle, 49.4 MOA needed to hit the target @ 2000 Yds with a 300 Yd zero. I've got 20 MOA built into the scope base to start.

It might give some of the stuff the boys there have a run for the money.

Sounds like it... They got some big stuff though! Occasionally my house shakes from it!

300 4-6" pellet trained SMB will be the newest resident apex predators in the main pond tomorrow afternoon. I realize this exceeds the advice offered here, however, I'm hoping the extra can help with the BG control and I just couldn't pass up the great pricing from Greg/Rex's source. Will keep everyone apprised....

In an effort to keep hammering my BG population, the 3.5 acre pond now consists of:

135 4-14" HSB
300 4-6" SMB
380 10-12" YP
1000's CSBG 1-8"
850 RES 6-9"
FHM, GSH, Papershell Crayfish, PK Shrimp

Been reading a lot of back issues, and Dr Mark Cornwall wrote an article back in 05[?] in which his research suggested a pond can sustain a healthy population of GSH with SMB [no LMB] indefinitely. I welcomed that news.

Here are my initial hopes:

SMB will take some pellets as they are pellet trained, and also target BG and GSH.

YP ideally will focus on the pellets and BG - not sure if they are fast enough for the GSH

HSB pellets, GSH and BG

I also plan on additional measures of periodic seinings for the CSBG and culling of all Females caught. If that doesn't work I have the old single sex LMB or stocking a few Esox...preferrably the former.

TJ, I put two of your SMB in my aquarium with 2 of my CSBG and 5 HyBC . I also put in about 1500 FH. The Bluegill and crappie started hammering the the fatheads but the Smallmouth weren't interested in the FH. I thought maybe the move had stress them a bit but when I put some pellets in for the FH, the smallies started eating. The smallies are as fat as a football---I don't think they could swim fast enough to even catch a FH!

Something I am interested in is how will the predation from both HSB and SMB affect the GSH numbers. GSH are more open water fish, so the HSB could play a bigger factor in their demise than the SMB. Now all you need are some walleye TJ and you'll have one sweet predatory pond! HAHA

With all of the fish possibly eating pellets there should be some interesting results to contemplate.

Good job, Rainman. Makes for an interesting little addition to the story.

SMB habituated on pellets can be a good and bad thing. Good in that they will grow well if they can get access to pellets, but bad in that they probably will not eat a lot of BG. Literature suggests smallies are not good predators of the sunfish types. The only failure of stocking smallies I ever had was putting fingerling SMB in with green sunfish (GSF).

Expensive GSF food?

Bill,


Smallmouth my not be good at keeping bluegills in check but I don know from personal experience they will hammer the small ones. Of course I had a high density of smallmouth in the pond at the time.

Cecil,
How many smallies is a high density? And how big were the small BG that the SMB "hammered".

I had about 100 in the .62 acre pond. They were hammering the 3 to 4 inch bluegill. (This was back when I had reproducing bluegill in the pond.)

Here's a post I had saved from a forum member "Lakedoctor" talking about a SMB/BG pond:

I think the key to a successful SMB/BG pond IMO is to stock the SMB first and give them a jump start...

Stock FHM and crayfish first... Allow them to build their numbers, then stock the SMB. Allow the original stockers to chow down on all the FHM and crayfish until you have fish in the 8"-10" class. Then stock BG in the 4"+ range. Those 4" BG will not be eaten by the 8"-10" SMB but their young will and even advanced sized young will.

If you stock the BG and SMB at the same time, the BG quickly outgrow the mouths of the SMB. You then end up with way too many BG who are too big for the smaller mouth SMB to eat. This can happen with LMB, particularly in northern ponds but not nearly as commonly.

TJ, did you let freedom ring or what?

I'm still going to stick to my guns and say pondowners should not expect SMB alone to control BLG reproduction (so that some big BLG are produced). I know this isn't always a popular statement here, but I'm "obligated" to make the warning.

Ok, I just couldn't leave this alone. I "had" to come back and add a bit more. Let me re-word this a little. I’ve got to stick by my guns and say that I have seen no personal evidence and no scientific articles that SMB alone will control sunfish reproduction so that big sunfish are produced. I’m always glad to admit when I’m wrong, and certainly our truly interested pondmeisters can do things such as trapping/removal, additional predators, feeding, etc., that changes the equation. However, for that base question, and for the time being, I will have to continue saying that I don’t think SMB will control sunfish. We just finished one experiment along these lines, and I'll try to get that in the next available issue of Pond Boss (Mar-Apr, I think).

One of the great aspects of this forum Dr. Dave is that we have access to experts such as yourself. Stick to your guns. Tell us over and over. We appreciate your input. Plus, much like Bill Cody did in 2008, you include photos of the magnificent GSF in your presentation which is an indication of superior intelligence.