Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose The ultimate trophy bass pond!

I am gonna put some christmas trees for the brush for the bream to hide. What about my F1/ florida relationship? You were correct. It is hard to have both. I want a catchable pond for our family enjoyment. I also want a lunker to peel a little drag .

I would think that the bass that got caught twice would be the aggressive one and the bass not caught yet the worthless one....

Also in terms of hookshyness, the most hookshy fish I have observed are fish that regularly interact with humans and have been caught alot when young. they will still bite, but not when they are looking right at you...

Just to consider in the mix, the comments about not putting too much fishing pressure on the pond are more for lure fishing. Live bait fishing may still continue to yield results (ie/ live bait fishing with a bluegill).

Sunil, you would like saltwater fishing with big live baits!!

You are right but you can't harvast a fish you can't catch. And considering you can only keep 50-100 lbs/acre of preditors per acre, the pond will be maxed out if you don't harvast some of the larger females. if you have 50 5lb females thats 250 lbs of preditors which is already the max in a 2.5 acre pond. And thats not counting the 2nd, 3rd, etc generation LMB. So if you harvast the females on the second catch there are two benefits: 1. you get to catch the female twice. 2. you make room for the remaining females to grow even larger. That is, I will have to harvast some big females because there is just not the pond capacity available to put them back. So I have to harvast the ones I catch twice. The hard to catch females will grow large and be the true trophies in the pond after 5 years or so. I just have to catch them eventually. Nobody said trophy fishing was easy . Keeping tabs on what I catch and thier weight ratio is essential in a trophy LMB plan and changing the plan accordingly will be key.

Lots of ponds will carry much more then 100lbs. per acre of predators.

I still disagree on the removing of the females caught twice as determining which of the females to remove, also I think you will find that out too.. Ken is correct that you can manipulate the amount of lbs of predators per acre pretty easily...nature may only support on average 100 lbs of predator or less, but managing a trophy largemouth pond isnt natural in and of itself...

Here is something to think about....
At Bass Pro Shops in East Peoria they have several double digit largemouth bass, about 50 other largemouth in the 3-8 lb range along with trophy specimens of several other species of fish all living in a 10' deep pond no more than 40 feet wide and 20 feet long....

calculated at lbs of predators per acre your probably talking 35,000+ lbs of predators per acre (someone with good math could probably figure that out that exact number pretty quick)....if you can really think about what it takes to pull that off, then you can really start to think outside the box of conventional natural pond mgmt....We arent talking about natural situations when we are talking about instensively managing for trophy specimens or producing more lbs of fish per acre, so why limit ourselves to conventional natural approaches to management...

so what really is your limiting factors when it comes to growing more lbs of trophy fish?

Guys Nate is right. Don't harvest the LMB that bite. Harvest the ones that don't using a shock boat. Tag the ones you catch and when you shock take out the no tag fish and the ones that look skinny.

Notice that the goal is changing from a trophy LMB pond to a balanced pond with good genetics. 2 entirely different things. My plan was for a trophy pond with no LMB harvest.

Nate ask "so what really is your limiting factors when it comes to growing more lbs of trophy fish?"

That may be the easiest question on this thread - answer is - knowledge. Once you have that you can do amazing things with water.

Now dont be trying to get into my outside the box territory.
Answer is habitat aka physical enviroment surrounding a specis population. All the genetics and know how can not get you there without it.

I completely agree n8ly! Like ewest said, fin clip or tag the ones that you catch, and use a shock boat to remove the others.

If you use numbered floy tags, you can identify each individual fish, and could keep a log as to what you caught it on, length, weight, etc. When the fish slows down it's growth or stops growing, replace it.

WOW!! This is good stuff. I hope to be asking similar questions regarding a 10acre pond very soon. Keep it going guys.

Really great post. I love these posts. Greg and Eric are all over the super-saturation of prey to grow big LMB. I've had a female only pond and it's a great way to control predators.

Eric, one question that I'm sure others have that is beyond me at this point. You recommended 100 6" female Floridas.. how are you accurately (100%) sexing 6" LMB? you'd have to 100% in this situation with 100 of them.