Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Existing Pond with house purchase

Just bought a house and it came with a 1 acre pond. The dam side is 25ft deep .. I have caught bluegill, black crappie, and largemouth bass and have seen catfish.

Questions?
Should I fish the crappie out? Ive only caught 2 and about 6in long.

Every time I throw out a bobber with a worm on it, it goes under in about 5 sec with about a 5 - 6 inch bluegill on the line. Should I be keeping these out?

The bass are all about 8-16in long. No really fat ones yet.I would love to get some really fat monsters! Any ideas?

Catfish Ive seen have been quite large. Only seen 2

We are getting ready to get the cat tails around the edge cleared out with a backhoe. Any ideas on keeping these out? And any suggestions on putting anything in for fish cover? I would also like to install a dock.. When is the best time to do this and how ? Also! I have one very steep bank that has some erosion into the pond... How should I get this fixed???

That is all Great info on this site and everyone looks like really nice folks!

Others will respond that are more knowledgeable than me, but one of the first questions you'll get here will be 'what is your goals for the BOW?' That'll help steer the brain trust in the right direction.

On the subject of BC - IMHO you're not going to be able to fish them out. But the answer is yes, if at all possible they shouldn't be in a BOW that size based on everything I've read. I have them in my big pond (7-8 acres) and THAT is really too small for that type of fish...the feast or famine spawn cycles they have can cause all sorts of problems.

Oh, forgot...on the topic of keeping cattails out...good luck with that. I've just adopted a maintenance strategy when it comes to cattails and willow sprouts....pull them out every time I walk around the ponds. Because they're just going to keep growing back.

Others can weigh in better than I, but it sounds like you have a pretty good environment for building monster largemouths given your setup of a lot of medium size forage fish. Do the bg/bc appear to be stunted? (skinny bodies, big eyes).

I will have to check tonight. The bluegill are quite active and I can see them swimming in packs of 3 or 4 fairly close to the top. I will snap a picture of some tonight.

The bass have been aggressive lately. Earlier this spring they used to swim with the blue gill but now they are eating them.

Well the bass action has dramatically lowered in past week here in Indiana. We sat out last week and fished for crappie and sunfish all day. We pulled 3 crappies out, 5in average. About 20 sunfish all about 4in. About two really nice size ones.

I want to have a BG, LMB and CC pond. I would love to get some monster cats in there. I have sat with chicken liver twice and haven't caught a single CC.

Should I stock some 10in CC in there. I would also like to start feeding those too. Are the albino CC any good?

I've found that in a lightly stocked pond environment, CC if caught and released, wise up VERY quickly. I have 2 large CC in my pond that were caught in 2009 and 20010, tagged and released. They have never been caught again. At least one has been seen swimming around this year.

I bet those CC are getting good size by now.

Ive heard the same thing before, so moral of that story keep the CC you catch?

How long do you think it would take for those catfish to reach eating size. And How many should I buy???

Stock 9"-10" CC now, they'll be 18" in the fall if you feed. They're eating size a month or so after stocking.

As to how many to stock, how many do you plan on eating per year?

do not make the same mistake I did. The company sold me 100 CC for my 1/4 acre pond.

Which I guess if I was feeding, aerating, and harvesting at least 30-50 a year that may have been ok.

I will say considering the number I have they are still decent size, but had I only stocked 25 they may be 10-15 by now

I would love to be able to eat as many as possible. I can't tell you an exact number but would love to stock it to the max with good eating fish and with my pond being only 3/4 of an acre and 25ft deep on the dam I don't want to get it over populated and the fishes growth to be stunted. Thanks for the help !

John

Stock 100 10" cc. Keep tabs on how many you take out to eat and re-stock that same amount next Spring. The first stockers that you put in the pond, cut off the adipose fin on them. Next stocking, trim part of another fin. That way you can tell what fish you are catching. Don't stock more than you removed the previous year, and really ramp up the fishing efforts if you have CC in the pond over 3#-5#.

Sounds good! Thanks!

Well I stocked 30 12 inch CC's this weekend. I went to feed them last night and about 10 24in Channel cats came up! Blew my mind! Does anyone know how much I should feed them? They cleaned up everything I threw out.

Feed as much as you want as long as you don't feed more than they can clean up in 15 minutes.

You might want to start fishing the larger CC out. Catch one and quit. See if you can target specific fish when they come up to feed. Tie a couple of pellets in a piece of pantyhose like a spawn sack, no weight or bobber. #4 hook lightly thru the pantyhose, gently drop it in front of a large CC. Catch and remove from pond. CC that large compete with LMB for small BG.

More food = more nutrients in the water = more FA. Just sayin'. Personally I think feeding the fish is worth the trade off for potentially more FA that I have to control.

Six inch bluegills fished without a bobber or weight seem to work well and the new arrivals can't mess with them.

I like the idea esshup! Make dinner for the wife every once and awhile.

PS what does FA mean? Sorry newbie

Dave I may have to give that a try if the fish food doesn't work. Or if I catch some of the little ones.

Filamentous Algae. There's a list of all the acronyms that we use in the archives.

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