Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Trying To Make My Pond Great-- Please Help

Hello. I'm new to the Pond Boss. I signed up because I want to find some help on how to make my pond as good as possible. i do a lot of searches and research online and thought it might help to get some of your thoughts on things.

The pond is a watershed lake. It is 8 acres and can fill up to 17. The runoff on the lake is all from CRP grass pasture. There is a spillway pipe that almost always has water coming out of it. Last summer the beavers had started to dam up the pipe which did make for more water. I realize we need to get rid of the beavers and make sure they don't destroy the dam. Even at the higher water level it's still a long ways from going over the dam. We enjoyed the extra water to some extent because it put more of the trees around the bank and grass into the water seemingly providing more cover to some extent. I do not live there and am only able to fish it 5 or 6 days a year.

The pond was built in 2000 or 01. Stocked with bass, bluegill, and cats. There seems to be a few hybrid or green sunfish that I will occasionally catch. i guess these wash in from the creek that sort of feeds it. I take the sunfish out anytime i catch one. i usually catch one or 2 out of 100 fish caught.

Initially when we first really started fishing it, maybe in 2003, we would catch a good ratio of size differences of bass. the largest that year was maybe 3 pounds. The next year or maybe 2 years from then we caught some weighing 6 pounds. I think the best we did was one summer a 5 and a couple 4s and a couple 6s. We began to take out any small bass we caught. The next couple 2 or 3 years we didn't see anymore 5 or 6, maybe would catch one 4. Again taking out all the smaller pound size bass we would catch. 2 years ago we probably harvested around 120 pounds of bass. the next summer on the trip the fish we took out seemed a little larger and more healthy. We would take out anything that was under a pound and half. Last year we took out 170 pounds of fish. Caught a couple that were 2 pounds and caught one that was 4 something. But we rarely see anything really small, like less than a pound and did not see anything over the 4.

I am asking if we are on the right track here. I don't know why we don't catch more in the 3-5 range and i would like to think there would be some fish in there pushing 10 pounds by now. The catfish do not seem to be reproducing. There are some large ones in there. 2 years ago we ran jug lines and took out 6 catfish that were all 6-8 pounds. We never see any small catfish under 5 pounds. My dad likes the catfish, if it was up to me there wouldn't be any in there but they don't seem to be a problem.

The pond does not have hardly any structure. i am adding some pvc structures on a spring trip in march. I am planning on making some concrete buckets with 1/2 inch pvc coming out of them and possibly some cut buckets to make sort of like a roof for bass to hide under. i also have a lot of milk crates and coke crates i was thinking about adding in some sort of conglomeration. these would possibly not be good to fish around so i may not add those. The only other structure is in the mouth of the creek that fills the pond there is some timber and standing wood. i'm also thinking about adding cattails or lily pads.

My thought is that before the bigger fish can get to a lure the smaller ones are hammering it. We catch a fish or have a bite on nearly every cast and it is fun, no doubt. We would like to see some larger fish and a better spread of sizes.

Last year we targeted the bluegill and removed 30 or so that were all huge, bigger than your hand.

Do you think that the added structure will help more of the baitfish to survive?
Should we continue to remove as many small bass as possible? How can we finally catch some larger bass and continue to grow bigger, healthy fish?
Will adding cattails and lily pads help?
Should I look at adding a bunch of crawfish?
Would adding bullfrogs from other ponds help the bass?
Any tips on what lures to use that would target the larger fish? We mostly use texas rig worms, rattle traps, and spinner baits. It doesn't seem to matter what we throw in, a pound and a half bass is what we end up catching.

Thanks in advance for any and all of your comments.

Andrew

I think you need some help fishing it....I'll get my gear!

Honestly, these guys will jump in and help answer all your questions. Shallow cover is number one in beginning a balanced fishery. The guys will warn you about planting cattails, I guess they can be quite a pain. Best case scenario is a mixture of many types of cover, aquatic vegetation is number one.

The creek should be bringing in some quality food, rock, brush, logs and artificial habitat will only help improve conditions to develop forage.

Wait and see, you'll get lots of help here.

Thanks Peepaw. i asked in the other thread for your opinon and you had already provided it!!

Hello, AS, and welcome.

Sounds like you have a nice place with a lot of potential. To make really meaningful recs, more info, such as relative weights of the bass and their appearance, would be helpful, but I think you've given enough info for preliminary thoughts.

Lots of possibilities....however, I think if you look at the last couple threads abou bass heavy ponds, you'll have your answers, with added forage pressure coming from your cats. Every one of those cats is eating as many BG as a 6-8lb bass, and you're likely seriously forage poor at this point.

IMHO, anything that you do will be pretty futile unless you really whup the bass population. Your observation about noticing some improvement after removal of bass is telling. No way to predict exactly how many fish or pounds of fish to remove, you need to keep records of fish caught and relative weights, when the numbers start to improve and continue to do so, you'll know that you're getting there.

Thanks for the input. I didn't really think about the catfish eating bluegill as much as a bass would. That's an interesting point.

As far as the look of the fish I would say they mostly look healthy. At one point they were somewhat skinny. We thought last year they maybe looked a little fatter than what we usually saw. We do need to keep more updated records but I'm not kidding when i say that every fish is right around 24 ounces. We have gotten to the point where we could guess within an ounce or two. It's funny how you think fish are larger but then when you get the digital scale you realize everything you have been catching isn't quite as big as you thought!!

A catfish will probably eat bluegill a lot more than a bass. It has happened to many here.

The big bluegills that you removed were your breeding stock. I would never remove a bluegill from a bass pond. The bass can only thrive on what they can eat and they need forage that is the right sizes. An often quoted statistic or factoid is that a bass needs forage that is 1/4 to 1/3 it's size. It's a matter of calories obtained versus energy expended.

When looking at class sizes of bass either caught or not caught, look at the forage base size or lack of it.

I would target the cats. When they get over about 2 pounds, they are quite a predator and competitor.

I would not put cut buckets in the pond--those are likely to be used by the catfish for spawning. If anything, add structure to hide the baitfish, not the apex predators.

Do a creel survey--i.e. record weights AND lengths for the next 100 or so fish that you catch. Cross-check those numbers against the Weight Ratio charts that you can find here. It will give you a really good picture as to what the population dynamics are like.

I thought on the buckets that if we cut them and just used things like the lids or lids themselves, that they would then be like roofs that the bass could hide under. I didn't think the catfish would use them but that is something to consider.

Thanks everyone for your ideas and opinions.

I didn't think it would be a big deal to take some of the bluegill out for a meal. But Dave if you say leave them then that's what we will do.

Thanks again everyone