Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations fishing poor - did my forage project work too well

Well, back in the early spring, we released 1 million golden shiner fry into our little 4 acre pond because the fish we were catching were really underweight. They were downright skinny!

By all observations, it seems that our forage project was a huge success and we now see lots of minnows. Our bluegill also seem to be thriving better than ever - our hypothesis was that our bluegill were the only forage so they were all being eaten by the LMB.

Since we're broke - can't afford any kind of professional services and our pond is impossible to seine due to all the timber in it - we have to rely solely on "creel surveys". LOL! That's the most scientific term I can use for the fact that all we've got to go by is what we can catch with a rod-and-reel.

But, the LMB fishing has gone from "pretty good" to "just about nothing". The thing is, when we do catch a LMB, it is FAT! All our recent catches have been fish that are porkers - huge bellies like they've been sitting around watching football and drinking beer all day!

So, my question: did they stop biting because they aren't hungry any more?

I think they're still hungry, but you might have to "match the hatch" more closely. They might be in a different area than what they were earlier this year. Either that, or they've been caught enough so they wised up on you. If you really want to catch some, and artificals just aren't doing it, try live bait, either small BG or GSH.

It's good to hear that the Anderson Fry worked for you.

I have a similar problem that usually occurs about this same time each year. My theory is that the bass are full on dieing tilapia. It is just a theory and I have no proof. What is do know is that the fishing is poor now and always gets better the second half of December and continues to be good all winter.

Thanks for the responses!

Yep, the Anderson fry were a great addition and an excellent company to deal with!

We do fish with live bait sometimes and we even get skunked on that sometimes, too. The most common live bait we use is golden shiners since that's what the local bait stores sell. We've been trying to use minnow traps to catch our own bait but we don't like to put out the traps if we're not going to be able to get back to them within a day or 2. My pond is not near my house - it's about 20 minutes drive away from us on the other side of the county. I don't like to trap fish and have them just die in the trap. Besides seeming wasteful and somewhat cruel, a trap full of dead minnows and small bluegill smells terrible!

More opinions on this would be welcome! I'm fully aware that I'm really a total novice at this. I know I can fish a little but managing a pond is very new to me. We've owned this pond for less than 2 years.

Have you set out a minnow trap to see what species of "minnow" you're seeing? If your Anderson fry did this well, you'd have a real rarity on your hand. It seems from other people's past experiences, stocking fry into a pond full of hungry bass rarely produces a viable population of golden shiners. Perhaps with all the wooded cover and such, your fry were able to find cover and you had a good plankton bloom to increase their growth and survival rates... If you haven't set a minnow trap out, give it a try... You can buy one for less than $10 and it'll be worth the money. The shiners you catch, if you do catch some can then be used for bait to do more "creel surveys"... Keep us posted! This is very interesting...

Our pond seems to me to be kinda like a forage heaven (or haven) - we've got a lot of shallow flooded creek areas and lots of vegetation as well as a ton of limbs and blowdowns and a couple of very large but no longer active beaver lodges. There are many places in our pond, near the creek inlet ( an area that is more than an acre), that are basically "unfishable" so, we had very high hopes of getting what it seems like we are getting.

I should have mentioned that we also seem to have had an excellent LMB and bluegill spawn. Before the added forage, we had been judiciously culling every LMB under 16". We caught so few BG that we didn't cull them at all thinking that we should be reducing predation and trying to maximize BG forage.

Now, we're thinking about switching our culling to remove the larger LMB (if we ever catch one) because we think they are probably stunted beyond help and that we should be letting our smaller (and probably not stunted) LMB have plenty of room to keep growing.

We do have minnow traps (see my previous post) and we have been catching golden shiners in them as well as a few baby BG.

BTW: as near as we can tell, we don't have any catfish. we've put out trotlines and jugs baited for catfish but we haven't seen a single one. That's just fine with us!

Please continue commenting - I have no doubt that we could be making some mistakes so, you can't hurt my feelings by pointing them out.

Interesting stuff Al, sounds like your pond is a great set up to have naturally reproducing forage fish like GSH. Places for them to spawn and take refuge from hungry mouths.

A short answer, Al, would be yes. In public waters, we definitely see angler catch rates go down when prey supplies are up, even when the sport fish density is the same. Very common observation for public waters, I would say.

I have had good luck with the golden shiners reproducing in my pond and just like Al can put out traps to catch them.

My experiences coincide with the general sentiment here also. When my FHM and GSH really took off and I could see thousands of minnows throughout the pond the HSB angling went from a dozen+ an hour to cathing ZERO the last 5 months. I also witnessed HSB pellet feeding reduce significantly yielding to the BG and YP. Considering I have 140 HSB stocked in a 4 acre BOW I should be catching them from time to time, even on a jig and crawler, and should have seen them continue feeding throughout the year...so I attribute their disappearing act of the HSB to the vast availability of forage and that they are simply satiated. Either that or I have had a HSB kill and none of the morts surfaced. I tend to believe the former.

I anticipate this Spring, once the FHM are knocked back significantly by the SMB, YP and HSB, for the HSB to reappear as GSH are a LOT more difficult to hunt for than FHM. I am really anxious to see the HSB growth. They went in Sept 08 at 4-6" and were 10-12" June 09. Gotta think by next Spring I'll be pushing 15"+.

Cool. I'm a patient man. I know that the forage will eventually thin out a bit and then, if we're all correct, the LMB fishing will pick back up. And, those babies will be healthier than ever!

Meanwhile, I've got other ponds I can fish that don't have that "problem".

It's all good!

Fishing this time of year can definitely be tough. We have had a lot of fresh water running into the lake and last week it looked like the lake had turned over. My experience has been both of these can definitely affect your catch rate. I have also noticed this time of year that alot of your bigger fish will move around in schools in mid lake feeding on shad, if you are a bank beater you will not come in contact with these fish. They are also very finicky when you do find them, I have seen them busting shad all over the place, but if you did not have just the right size and color bait you would not catch them.

Maybe someone can help me with this question: We have been catching mostly small bass (8-12 inches) which we have been culling. I have cleaned some of these fish and their stomachs are empty? I have an abundance of bluegill and some thread fin shad. They do not appear poor by any means, but they all have empty stomachs. The bigger bass (3+ pounds) are all very healthy with high WR and big stomachs. What's the deal with the smaller bass?

Al - I tend to agree with you that you're okay...helps me feel better about my place too! As Travis said - matching the "hatch", or preferred forage size, shape and color in your presentation could be very critical. I'd think your surviving GSH fry from this Spring/Summer should be what, around 2-4" by now? I would think any small plastics would work like flukes, tubes and paddle or curly tail grubs in a silver/blue silver/black. Any luck with those?

One more thing - isn't Athens the birthplace of REM? I understand it's a very cool college town/city?

Teeh - yep! We've got REM and quite a few more in town - this is a music town and a pretty cool place. We've also got the University of Georgia here. My wife is actually the Mayor of Athens. Come visit!

Well, the LMB fishing has been poor in my pond since about June and we've fished every cubic inch of water with every kind of bait you can imagine. Every kind of plastic you've ever heard of and live baits like shiners, baby BG, varieties of worms, crickets, etc. deep and shallow, fast and slow, and on-and-on....

It ain't like we don't know how to fish - we've been catchin' 'em in other ponds and lakes. But, nobody has really been catchin' a ton of fish in Georgia this year. We went from a 3-year drought to El Nino flooding this year.

So, like I said...I'm not panicking. Just running a theory past you guys to see what you think.

Thanks for all the responses! More are welcome!

Well, good to know I can drop a name if I ever find myself getting roughed up in Athens! What a trip - you are the first first husband I've ever met.

Thinking out loud here:

Lots of rain = lots of flooded vegetation/structure = lots of spawing habitat for GSH and plenty of structure for your other fish to settle in...making them a little less accessible to angling?

Lots of GSH = less LMB appetite

The rain is a blessing to my friends in the SE - I'm glad you finally broke the drought. Natural cycle of your BOW - now the fish will grow hefty and you'll pull off some big spawns. This is just my two cents...

Al, Is there any way people could be sneaking in and raiding your pond?

Well, of course that is possible but it's not likely. Even though our pond is across town, we go there pretty often. I own it with a good friend and there is a couple of other guys who have unlimited access permission - one of those guys is a game warden who lives about a block away from it. We're always checking for signs that somebody might be going there without permission but we haven't detected any. If somebody was getting in there often enough to impact the fishing then, I feel sure we would know.

oftentimes its someone on the inside....

a mole??

Hold on, Tom G. will be right along to tell you how to survey with dynamite. I'm sure your GW friend has heard that joke.
Welcome aboard to another Bulldog. I was a lesser known bulldog from a coupla states to the west.

Five star, no doubt.

Creel surveys using DuPont Spinners. Novel idea!

I can't figure out all the jokes but, just in case - OK....

Anyway, I actually don't have any reason to think that our fish are missing just because they aren't biting very well. I can fish but I know that just because I'm not catching much doesn't mean that they aren't there. Sometimes, I think I can hear them laughing at me.

Al. sorry for some of the inside humor. Sometimes things get out of hand. Not knowing the history of the pond, how and when it was built, did you build it, or was it there when you bought the property. First off, 4 acres is not a 'little' ponsd to many of us on the forum. Many have a fish in barrel situation and still have trouble catching them at times. It sounds like you have too many refuge places for game fish and forage. When and if your pond get lower next summer, you may began to thin out the fish holding areas to concentrate them more. Remove some blowdowns, dredge out some of the feeder creeks, remove some vegetation, etc. Common recommendations are 1 or 2 areas of cover per acre. Feeding in 1 or 2 areas will also help congregate the forage fish, thus the game fish.

Al if you don't stock the golden shiners again do you think that the predators will eventually catch up to the prey in numbers and the fishining will once again improve? Isn't this all just a balancing act of having enough prey to keep the predators fed but not so much that they are never hungry? Nate what about your very heavy prey pond? Can you catch the bass out of it or is electroshocking the only way you even see these really fat bass?