Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Opinions on an old pond (fish in it after all)

Yep, those are BG. I'd use the smallest bobber you can get, make it small enough so that it just barely floats with the bait on it. If you can't find a tiny one, get the smallest you can find and pinch some split shot right under the bobber, adjusting the weight so it barely floats. It will be a lot easier to notice when they bite then.

I'll either use one of the Thill brand bobbers, or a bobber that is used for ice fishing.

Long shank hooks make getting the hooks out easier, and if you don't have a pair, get yourself a pair of hemostats that have a gentle curve to the jaws. A pair that is about 6" long is just about right. That makes getting the hook out easy (for me).

Thanks for the tip, I'll try a smaller bobber next time. Hopefully it'll get warm enough soon to catch them on jigs, that'll help some, too. I guess I'll need some more practice with the hemostat. I'm used to takikng hooks out of the corner of a trouts mouth and they didn't seem to help much with the bluegill. Long shank hooks would've probably made it easier though.

I think you asked on another thread about the taste of the goldens I got and I never got back to you. I had a couple last weekend and they did seem to have a different taste than the rainbows I have eaten, a little sweeter in flavor. The texture was about the same, maybe a little less firm but that couldn've been a difference in how I cooked them.

That's about the same difference in flavor and texture that I had as well. Interesting!

It is surprising, I've never really noticed a difference in how any hatchery trout taste but I guess there probably is some.

I also meant to mention before that when walking around the pond the other day I saw some salamanders in the shallows that were either trying to drown each other or mate. Also, there seem to be a lot of frogs around the lake. When you walk around the edges at dusk you can see them moving from the edge to deeper water and you can hear them at night. I've always heard them called peepers, not sure if that's the actual name or not. So those are two additional forage items available to the fish in the lake. Since minnows have pretty much been ruled out due to adult fish populations already present, I was thinking maybe crayfish could be added? The entire length of the dam minus the swimming area has rock from the waterline down until the slope lessens. This continues around the northwest side of the lake. There is some rock present on the opposite shore and across the shallow end of the lake, but not as much. These are some pics I've posted before that give an idea of what's present:






The water level is currently up to about a foot below the bottom of the walkway in the first pic and after the rain we're getting tonight should be going out the spillway, which is visible directly under the platform in the second. The second shows the rocks along the dam and northwest shore and the south east shore. The picture of the trout was taken on the dam and the fourth picture shows the northwest shore and kind of what's along the bottom of the southeast shore and shallows. Would crayfish be able to establish themselves and thrive in this kind of habitat? Obviously the lake isn't full all year but at least along the dam there is rocky cover available as long as the lake has water in it. Are they a viable option or a waste of time?

It doesn't seem like there are a bunch of crevasses and cracks among the rocks for the crayfish to hide in. I'm sure some might avoid predation, but I don't think that there are enough hiding spaces for them to thrive.

Well, this has been a typical Virginia spring. We had a few days of nice weather that was starting to get the water warm enough for the bass and bluegill to start moving around some then it's dropped back down into the 30s and 40s and has everything back to about where it was in the beginning of March. When things were warming up I started seeing some small fish in the shallows. Some appeared to be minnow shaped so I bought a cheap minnow trap and set it out this morning. No minnows in it but I did pull up these four guys this evening when I went down to feed the trout:





They were between 1 and 1 1/2 inches. From what I've read, year old bluegill average somewhere between 3-8 inches so are these probably from a late spawn last year? After it had warmed up I saw three or four of this size floating along the shore the first couple of days it cooled down again. I also caught 10 7-10 inch bass in about an hour one day when it was still fairly nice out and missed or lost that many more. It'll be nice to be able to get a good sample of the bass and bluegill once the weather warms up again to see what I have to work with.

They could easily be from last year.

I agree, last year BG YOY.

Thanks guys, I was pretty sure there hadn't been a spawn this year as I was pretty sure didn't warm up long enough for that. I caught 3 more this size in the trap yesterday and have it out again today, still nothing else caught in it yet. Did some fishing this morning since the wind wasn't as bad as it has been and caught 4 trout and saw a bird catch a fish and proceed to fly over me with it in it's talons. We saw a bald eagle about 1/2 a mile up the road from the house the other day so I initially thought that's what it was before it flew over but this bird had white feathers on it's underside so I don't think it was. I looked up some different large birds online and it looked a lot like the pictures I found of ospreys but I've never heard of them being around here. There are a lot of hawks but this would've easily been the biggest one I've ever seen, and I'm not sure if they will go into the water after fish or not.

I also finally got a few pictures of a single strand of the weed I inquired about a while back that I thought was chara:




Here's the catch from this morning/dinner this evening. The bottom rainbow had really been gorging itself on the Game Fish Chow I've been feeding them, the top one had been feeding on it as well but not to the same extent, and the middle two didn't have anything in them:

It looks like some kind of stemmed plant with filamentous algae on it.

The plant looks like chara. The 3"-8" size in yearling BG is more typical for pellet fed BG in uncrowded conditions. Particularly the 8" size. A 2" BG is rather normal at 1 year of age in more normal conditions here in VA.

Thanks for the replies. The 3-8" in a year seemed like it would be a best case scenario. I could count the number of bg over 8" I've caught and have fingers left over. They just don't seem to get that big around here, at least where I've fished. It got up into the upper 60's here yesterday and I was feeding the trout near dark and saw some bg cruising the shallows. I tossed a few pellets in and they came up to check them out but only one took one. Hopefully they'll start taking them when the water warms up some more, which it should if the forecast goes as planned the next week. I also did some bass fishing yesterday evening and caught 8 fish in an hour and a half span. Broken down into size class, there were two at 8" inches, four at 10", one each at 11" and 13". One of the smaller ones looked skinny but the rest weren't really fat but didn't look like they were missing a lot of meals, either.

A bass needs forage that is 1/4 to 1/3 it's body size. It's a matter of energy expended vs calories obtained.

So can the size of forage available limit bass growth? The biggest bg I've seen and caught have been 4-5" and the lmb I've caught have maxed out at about 13-14", so it seems that the biggest known lmb to bg ratio is about equal to the bass to forage size ratio. By the 1/4-1/3 ratio a 4" bg should be a good size for a 12-16" bass, so I'm assuming that if bg above 4" aren't available the bass growth rate will drop off sharply or become non-existant once it reaches 16"?

Yep. And remember that your BG have to live long enough to spawn and keep spawning.

A 14 inch bass can stay alive chasing minnows but won't thrive. The bass needs 10 pounds of forage to gain one pound. I've never figured out what a maintenance diet is. I expect it varies with the water temps and metabolism.

I had the minnow trap out for 3 days (checked it every 12 hours or so) and only thing I got in it were the small bg like pictured and a salamander so I may have been mistaken on the minnows. So as of right now I know there are two size classes of bg, 1-1 1/2" and 4-5", and all of the lmb I've caught have been in the 7" or 10-13" range. My theory is that when the pond almost dried up over the 2008-2009 winter, only the spawn of that year surivived, whether due to low oxygen or the larger ones being fished out. That could mean last year would've been the first year they were large enough to spawn, so there are two classes of fish in the pond, the three year old fish and the fish that were spawned last year. Does this seem feasible based on the sizes of the fish caught so far and if so, is it best just to let them be for now to see what happens?

I think it is very feasible. Eliminate the small bass anytime you can. Try to give the BG some opportunity to reestablish themselves or go buy a bunch of 6 inch bluegills if you can find them.

Dave, is your recommendation to remove the small lmb based on giving the freshly spawned bg a chance to live longer? It has been up in the 70s the past couple days and when I went to the pond this evening there were bg in the shallows along most of the shore I walked. I had been seeing 2 or 3 here or there while it's been cool, this was the first time I'd seen vast numbers of them. I had hydrated some Game Fish Chow to see if they'd take it better if it was sinking. I walked along the bank for about 1/2 of the pond and pretty much every time I threw a piece in a group of 5-6 would come up to check it out, sometimes more. Some of it still floated and only a couple of those were taken but pretty much every piece that sank got eaten, which was encouraging. They were also feeding on bugs around the shore as there were ripples from them coming up the whole time I was down there. Unfortunately it's supposed to drop back into the 50s the next few days so that may shut them off again but next week it'll be back up into the 60s and 70s.

Keep doing that and the BG will be feed trained to floating feed quickly.

Yes, that is what I mean. I rarely see a pond with too many small, stunted bluegills. I often see ponds with too many stunted bass with nothing to eat.

Ewest - Hopefully they'll catch on quickly. The pellets got pretty messy when hydrated, may not have done it completely right.

Dave - That's what I was thinking, but as of right now it seems that the size of the bg is more of a limiting factor than quantity. I don't think the bg or lmb are currently stunted, just haven't encountered any large specimens yet. Removing bass may be a good idea anyway though as it will probably help the ones left grow faster? It's definitely something I'll consider.

I fished a while this morning and caught the smallest lmb I've caught out yet while fishing for trout and also the first sunfish other than a bg, I am pretty sure it's it's a hybrid.

That isn't a hybrid sunfish. It is a redbreast sunfish(RBS)... Neat you have some in the pond. They are a nice addition to ponds in my opinion. They will never get nearly as abundant as BG, but should stick around in small numbers. Not a bad sized RBS either....

Good catch on the redbreast sunfish, hadn't even thought of them because I've never caught one out of a pond. I was going on the larger mouth and greenish blue on head, didn't pay attention to the flap behind the gills. I know the owner has done some bucket stocking in the past from a local stream on his family's property that flows about 1/4 mile from the pond. I'm guessing that's where this fish came from. The ones I've caught from streams have had a darker coloration on top and a much more orangish/red belly. There are some streams nearby that have good populations of nice sized RBS so if I catch some more from the pond I may look into transfering some more over. I've looked back at some posts on RBS and while it seems that they a aren't usually successful in ponds, it is possible. I haven't caught any RES from this pond yet but have caught some from the smaller pond on the property so I will begin moving some of them over soon as well as any 5"+ BG I catch. It's supposed to be warmer Monday and Tuesday so I'm going to try to do it then before the fish take to spawning beds. I caught a BG yesterday morning that was really fat, I'm guessing it was carrying eggs. The RBS was only slightly longer than the BG I've caught but was close to twice as thick. It seems that a lot of fish that are native to streams grow much larger in lakes or ponds, so I'm guessing RBS could as well if they adjust to pond life. I would like to add to existing BG to expand the forage base, and have RES and RBS (if they'll work) to enhance angling diversity and increase the chance of catching larger sunfish as they seem to get bigger than BG naturally in most bodies of water. I'll also continue to work on getting the BG to take pellets. Does the mix of the three sunfish seem possible or are there issues that could arise from it?

I don't see any issues with those 3 species combined together. I wouldn't say RBS get bigger than BG. I have never seen a pond or lake where BG didn't out grow RBS, but anything is possible.

I was just going by my experience, the RBS caught out of a few local rivers average bigger size than bluegills I've caught out of ponds/lakes around here. I'm sure you're right about BG being able to outgrow them in ponds though if the conditions are right. I caught about 15 bluegill out of the small .2 acre pond here today and transfered them over to the larger pond. They were between 4-6" with most on the smaller side. The smaller ones were skinny looking but the larger ones were pretty thick, in my opinion. I know that's not a very big number of fish but I think that any additional spawning will help in the larger lake and I'm going to try to get as many as possible out of the smaller pond before they spawn there. I'm going to pick up some worms and try again tomorrow, I should have better luck with them than the artificials I was using today. I also caught a 5" crappie out of the small pond. I think it was a white crappie but am not 100% and couldn't get a picture of it. No RES caught there today.

I also think I'm going to go ahead with Dave's recommendation of removing some LMB from the bigger pond. While I don't think there are any stunting issues with them right now, I don't think taking some out will hurt as they seem fairly easy to catch right now. I'm thinking of initially removing 50 in the 7-11" range and seeing what kind of effect that has on fishing before committing to removing more. I'm not sure what to do with them though, I could eat some of them but after I'll probably end up with a good number of trout in the freezer after I fish them out. I think I may add 10 or so to the smaller pond to knock down the panfish numbers as I have yet to see or catch a bass over 6-7" out of there and there seem to be a lot of smallish, thin BG. Hopefully they'll also eat any LMB spawn and keep them from stunting as well.