Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Population management advice needed

Hello pond experts! I am now helping to manage the 22 year old pond owned by our condo association. The pond is just over 1/2 acre, 4 ft average depth, 7 ft at its deepest. The pond has a fountain and aeration system managed by another company here. However, after extensive fishing myself for the past year, and from the feedback from 3 residents who have fished it somewhat regularly over the past several years, the fish population seems to be unbalanced. The BG fishing is still good and many BG, both large(8-10in) and small are visible from the bank. However, the LMB are increasingly difficult to catch and they appear stunted and skinny. CC were caught in the past, but no one has been able to catch any in the past few years. Lastly, many large carp, both common and grass, are visible near the surface, maybe 5-7 of each species easily 15+ lbs each. I don't know if this past winter, which had a few major snowstorms affected the population, but after reading several posts here, as well as some publications by the Indiana DNR, I'm still not sure if I should suggest they start over, or attempt to correct it. We are seeking a fairly balanced pond of BG, LMB, and maybe some CC, perhaps favoring LMB slightly. Thanks for your help.

Welcome Hkoala, I am sure you will be able to find good advice from folks here and from the archives. There seems to be a lot of members from the Indiana area, so perhaps they can help you out. It might be best for someone to come out and look at your whole situation and give advice. If you are in a HOA, you may not want to personally take on the responsibility of all the work to get it into shape.

My only simple novice advice is to not release any CC that are caught. Keep them and replace with new stock. They get hook shy if returned.
To favor the LMB scenario might not meet your expectations because of the smaller size pond. You can only have so many pounds of LMB in there. They might also get hook shy if C&R frequently.

Lets see what others will say......

Sounds like a classic catch and release situation where you have BG/LMB/CC. Throw in carp that some knucklehead decided to stock and you have a challenging fishery.

My best guess is this... In a half acre pond, it doesn't take much fishing pressure to make he LMB very hook shy. In today's day and age, catch and release is all the rage. So every LMB is released every time. So, even though they aren't big because there are way too many of them in the pond, these LMB are older and SMART. They do a good job of controlling BG so the BG are not overpopulated and reach decent sizes. If you are not restocking the CC, it is unlikely they are recruiting in the pond with heavy bass predation. So, the few larger adults have been caught and released and are very smart.

My advice, pump as much water out of the pond as you can. Hit it with retenone and start over.

Trying to produce a quality LMB fishery in a half acre pond where fishing pressure is anything but extremely minimal is not going to happen. A half acre pond can hold at most 50 pounds of LMB. Even if the bass average a mere 2 pounds each, that is only 25 bass. Doesn't take long to make them VERY smart.

If I was managing the pond, I would go with a HBG/HSB/CC stocking. Set up a feeder and intensively manage it. HSB will outfight LMB any day and can be easily controlled as they do not reproduce. They are easy to source in IN and are not overly expensive. They take to feed well and this allows you to support more pound per acre as you are not relying on a natural food chain. HBG are cheap to source and quickly reach in excess of a pound when fed. Keep CC numbers manageable and allow them to help the HSB remove any babies the HBG make.

You can add new fish for each species depending on fishing pressure each one is receiving. This combination is by far the easiest to manage but still produce a decent fishery under heavy fishing pressure which is bound to happen in an HOA pond.

Thank you to fish n chips and CJBS2003. Both your suggestions make perfect sense as the pond has not been managed for years and only catfish and very few LMB have been harvested at all. I hadn't considered hybrids but there are some good posts on here supporting your stocking recommendation. Thanks for your suggestions.

Another vote for starting over with Hybrids.

Any suggestions on stocking ratios and sizes? The posts I've read suggest something like the following:
25 HSB 5-7"
100 HBG 4-6"
25 CC 9-11"
How does feeding affect the suggested numbers?

I would double the HBG numbers, but other than that I think you are onto good numbers. Without feeding, you would have to drastically cut the numbers of fish back and stock forage and allow it to establish first.

Sounds good. Thanks for all your help guys.