Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Selective LMB Harvest

Here's a thought. According to the book, we should be removing around 25 lbs lmb/acre/year to alleviate competition and grow larger fish.

Assuming this is actually performed by lake owner by hook and line, this practice would select for fish that weren't easy to catch. Could harvest of bass in this manner encourage the production hard to catch lmb?

I've come to the conclusion that bass harvest should be done via electrofishing or other more non-selective means, removing males from the system.

Your thoughts.......

Todd,

I have had exactly the same common sense thoughts....not about limiting removal to electro-fishing...but that the common management practice of removing small bass actually makes the situation much worse in terms of catching LMB in a closed small pond environment.

You end up with bass that a) either won't take artificials to start with or b) bass that been previously released because it passed a slot limit but will no longer fall to artificials. I really believe that is my situation in my main pond.

Electro-fishing might be an option, but that kind of takes the fun out of it...then on the other hand, its no fun to catch only small bass or no bass either.

Interesting to hear what others think.

Todd, a study in Alabama that Ewest provided came to those conclusions where frequently caught bass were removed to a pond for further breeding. Several iterations were used and the bass progeny remained "relatively" easy to catch. Also, the pond was drained and the bass that were never caught were removed to another pond and their progeny fished for. Several generations of them were also fished for and studied. Fishing results for them were poor.

I'm not sure how electrofishing would really solve the problem unless all caught fish were tagged by the angler.

The only good thing about a wary fish is that someday, I just might catch a whopper.

Dave,
That thought has been in my mind also!

Overton has a point : quote "this practice { taking out bass by hook and line} would select for fish that weren't easy to catch." , by which I assume he means , this pratice will have the effect of taking out bass that were catchable and thus leaving a higher % of non-catchable or hard to catch bass. While this idea has merit it is limited by several factors.

Large bass , catfish and BG non-selectively eat many times more bass 12 in. and under as a % than man takes out as a predator. Further some of the small bass caught by man would as they got older or more conditioned become less catchable. However many of the small bass caught by man would be the most catchable bass in the pond . Therefore to the extent they are taken out the remaining population as a % is less catchable. This does not answer the question of is it worse in small ponds because the take out rate is based on per acre amounts which as a % is the same in both small and large ponds. I do think that the pratice of taking out lots of 10-14 in. bass by hook repeatedly over time does make the catchability of the remaining population less {worse}.

Seperate from this idea is the recommendation of taking out male bass which many recomend and I think is a very good idea.

Electrofishing as Dave notes is non-selective and may help but is not a complete answer as costs have to be considered . Reducing the number of bass followed by adding of bass berd for aggressiveness is a partial answer. Taking out bass by using live bait is also a partial answer. So is the following.

Here is where the second pond comes into play. In your second pond start with a good forage base and then add a selection of different size bass that were caught by hook from the first pond or add only fish that were selectively bred for aggressiveness and then caught by hook. See the report Dave referenced and others which show that the pond stocked with parents with high catchability produced like populations.

No doubt other conditiond behavior or genetic traits come into play like competition , growth rates and others. One interesting study on fish in Fla. and Ga. showed that most of the trophy bass had fast growth rates and reached much larger size at an early age. These fish were the most aggressive in their year class and even though fat would still out compete the rest of their class. Eating is a genetic hard wired event based on metabolism and all feed as much as possible when the water temp. is right and spawning is not in mind.

One other point which I saved for last. I have seen and heard reports {speculation} that bass when hooked {stressed} and released back into the water release some sort of chemical or other response that acts as a warning or negative stimulus and reduces at least for a time the catchability of the fish in that area. If so then in a small pond the catching of a couple of fish if released can effect a large part of the pond and reduce catch rates. ewest

EWEST,

I have also seen those assertions over the years and believe it certainly is possible. When fishing in salt water for years, it was always a given that if you hooked and lost that first fish in a school, your chances of catching another went down considerably. Superstition, perhaps, but perhaps not.

Your points also support a growing belief that I have that several small ponds are better than one large pond, from a LMB catchability standpoint and an overall pond management standpoint. That statement, if true, has significant implications to pond construction in the future.

I'm facing a very real such implication right now and I'm very strongly leaning toward the construction of more 2 to 5 acre ponds rather than one much larger pond.

My objectives are to have naturally self-sustaining ponds that are chemical free and will reliably produce good catches of predator fish for good anglers...with the real chance of an occasional trophy. Multiple ponds seem to afford the best opportunity to meet that objective.

Question: Has anyone tried or considered controlling LMB numbers in a bass emphasis pond by selective seining - tossing out all the fingerling LMB collected during multiple seine hauls?

Probable advantage: Would not tend to remove easily hooked fish or train them to be hook shy.

Probable disadvantages: Like other LMB number control methods, would become harder to have an impact as pond size increased. Would be impossible in some ponds where structure/layout/depth does not permit seining.

Unclear to me: How would limiting LMB number at a smaller size affect the forage fish population - would forage fish size increase or decrease and if so, would this be good or bad from a trophy bass viewpoint?

I believe you can develop a pond full of hook shy bass.
I practice throwing out little ones and transplanting some from other ponds.
This reduces bass numbers while replacing some with other catch able bass.
I determine what size to remove and how many based on their relative weight.
The down side of this is the spread of disease, which I haven’t had a problem with so far.

Theo, others may have a different experience than me but I have seldom been able to seine any LMB other than small ones. Once they get about 8 to 10 inches long, they jump over the seine.

Of interest: Lusk mentioned at D/FW that large CNBG will turn on their side and flatten themselves when the seine is coming. It goes right over them.

DD:

I figure small fish (of any species) is all you can seine out, because I've never gotten anything over maybe 4". I think bigger fish are smart enough or fast enough to avoid being caught. So I'm just wondering if removal of small (circa 3") LMB could be used to control numbers in a manner that would lead to a large bass pond.

Theo,

I don't have any data, but don't believe this would be effective. It's the bass(males especially) that survive to 8 to 10 inches that need to be removed. A very high % of those 2 to 3 inchers that you might seine will be eaten anyway....and actually be good "forage" for the larger LMB. Its the ones that you would miss and the ones that survive to get to 8 to 10 inches that are of concern and seining will not impact them.

Seining is as much an art as a science. We'll be learning how to seine fish until we are dead, but one thing we have learned is that lmb do not catch well in a standard seine. They jump over, and they'll make you pull your hair out even if you hold up the float line all the way. A bagged seine, with trailing pocket in middle, is the best way to catch large numbers. They are hard to pull, hard to harvest, and drag pond bottom very closely so collect silt real bad. It is a 3-4 man operation at least. Electrofishing still most efficient means for selective removal.

This would explain why I got so very few (6 LMB fingerlings in 4 seine hauls) earlier this year. I had been assuming the small LMB in my pond were relatively few in number (first LMB spawn was this year). So the good news is I may have more than I thought.

The bad news is we're back to catching or electrofishing LMB in big bass ponds.

Two points :
1) Live Bait - this was discussed at the DFW meeting, and without a doubt, hungry fish will always attack squirmy, moving, natural food first. This should assist with your objective. If you want to have a culling session, use baitshop minnows. Learn to identify the males and remove them.
2) If you have a smaller pond, do NOT fish with artificial lures for the same type fish every time out. They may be conditioned to softer (squirmy, moving, natural food) because their mouth has been hurting/healing from an unknown artificial bait.

In conclusion, and on a radical turn...huge whitetail bucks have become nocturnal to avoid the human element during the day...when was the last time you tossed a zara spook to those finicky bass after sunset ?

Eastland :

Great points. I agree the live bait tatic will help. I have seen data on night feeding bass in the south during summer . When we were having no luck catching bass on one lake where we knew we had a good population I ask a friend who was one of the fisheries biologist for the state for that area. He said they were feeding at night during july-mid sept. without looking at the lake. Because he wanted data on this lake which is adjacent to his large river/resv. area of 35,000 acres he brought in his electrofishing boat and surveyed. Tons of bass and shad and cats and BG and rough fish but none could be caught during daytime. When it got dark we took his boat in the middle of the lake and turned on his light and shined it in the water and all hell broke lose . When the light hit a group of shad the bass went into a feeding freenzy knocking shad out of the water everywhere. He said he saw that all the time on his resv. There was also a recent article I think in bassmaster on fishing at night on Lake Fork for large bass. ewest