Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations pond newbie just checking to see if we're doing ok

Pond is about an hour north of Houston, 2 acres, about an 8-10ft average depth (20 ft max), about 2ft surface visability, newly constructed, filled with water from a small nearby spring fed creek(no bullheads or sunfish in the creek fwiw) that starts on property.

Pond was full this April and we stocked with fathead minnows, like a pound of golden shiners, 600 3-5" coppernose BG, 100 redears.

This october we stocked with 215 F1 LMB and 200 channel catfish.

Fish are fed morning and evening. I regularly watch when the fish feed and have adjusted feed output from 1-3 pounds of feed (40% protein) to what the fish eat in about 15 mins.

We're really just shooting for a general recreation pond. Personally I'd like to keep the BG population as healthy as possible and producing easy to catch hand sized fish or larger on demand for me and the kiddo. For the bass, numbers of 1-3 lb fish with occasional larger fish is our goal (currently feeder is set at about 1.5 lbs/feeding).

Right now the 1st gen bluegill are 7"-10" (happy about this) and the 2nd gen range from 3-6" (lots of fish bigger out of the 2nd gen than were the 1st gen stockers). the bass were feed trained and they and the catfish are coming to feed along with the bluegill every day.

No fish have been harvested so far. Just wanted to welcome myself to the forum and post this for any suggestions or evaluations to make sure we weren't doing anything wrong for our goals for this pond.

That's phenominal growth (in my eyes), going from 5" CNBG to 10" CNBG in 6 months!!! Pictures please!!

I thought the same thing Esshup, but thought that maybe that was normal in southern waters. Wish that was possible here..... and spawned with some of those being 6".....wow.

I would start thinking about those feed trained bass and catfish. If they keep growing, which they will, large BG might be hard to come by. Keep an eye on them.

A 3:1 ratio of BG to LMB, with twice daily feedings, and a desire for 1-3 lb LMB.... classic big BG scenario. I would watch the CC though, that's a substantial number in my opinion, and they may crowd the BG away from the feed. I also wonder what kind of recruitment you will see from the BG, with that many predators (even feed trained), in place.

Welcome Taylor, sounds like you've done your homework and are well on the way to a great pond. I can't offer the kind of good advice that the masters can except to keep inquiring.

yeah, growth is crazy here. Of course the water temp in the pond is still in the 70's right now and we're still hitting 80* almost every day.

I wouldn't have believed the growth in the bluegill if I hadn't watched it.

The CC were put in as the main fish we're going to eat out of the pond, but I know we're going to need to harvest others. The FHM population is strong right now as well. Basically as soon as those CC are 12" and bigger, we're going to eat every one of those we catch.

I guess the size range is a little generous...MOST of the gen 1 bluegill I'm catching/seeing are around 7" and a solid "handsized" with a few that are larger, with the largest I've caught being about 10. MOST of the 2nd gen are around 4" with some in that 6" range.

Here's a typical fish from the 1st gen. that I caught in August:

Nice CNBG!

DON'T release any of the CC. You will have a heck of a time catching them again. I've got some in my pond that have to be 30+" and I can't catch them because they've been caught before. One was caught in 2009 and one in 2010.

George 1 will be happy to see another fly fisherman on here!

Yeah, I've probably caught and release WAY more of the fish in this pond than I should have by now...LOL. They kill a small pink bead head nymph.

Oh, and here's a pic of the pond when it was about half full. I think we put the CNBG and baitfish the weekend after this pic was taken and the pond is now about 6-7' deeper than this (and stable there).

Nice pond, good luck!
CMM

After doing a bit of reading, I was concerned that the #'s of redear in my pond may not have been enough (and I've had hell finding one since june, which isn't all that unusual but still) so I put 150 more a few weeks ago. I also put in 5 more pounds of golden shiners, as only 2 lbs of those got stocked originally.

Observations of my fish since my last post:
The sores on the fish look like they resolved themselves, I saw some fish that looked like they were healing/healed in January.

My bass haven't grown as much as I'd hoped, but I've got between about 10" and 1/2 lb, and 6".

My bluegill are FAT...and there are LOTS from 2"-10" and they are all fat.

I kept my Texas Hunter feeder set at 1 sec. most of the winter, and the feed was eaten on most days. We're now in spring and I'm at 2 sec. in the morning and 4 in the afternoon already. Water temps are in the 60's already after some warm days with near 60* lows.

It is amazing to me how a couple warm days sent my fish into a frenzy on the feed. There are days they ate up the feed in minutes (and I'd handfeed a little more). Also the fish would go nuts on warm days before fronts. Just like you experience bass fishing in a lake...hmmm....

I'm now feeding a mix of aquamax 600 and the smaller pelleted feed I had. The fish definitely like the aquamax better (may just be size thing considering larger bass now and larger bluegill).

There's a definite hierarchy to feedings. My larger bass get first dibs, then the larger bluegill, and the shiners and small bluegill mop up around the fringes. My one concern about the pond is that I never see the catfish feed. Like never. And I haven't caught one either. Considering replies here and more reading, I'd wanted to take out 50-75 while they were babies, but I've been unable to catch one. I've fished drop shotted night crawlers on bream hooks until I'm blue in the face (also looking to guage my redear growth on that rig).

I had at least 3 different water turkeys on my pond over the winter, but they ran off easily and never saw more than 2, and I never saw them foraging. They learned to run for the hills at the sound of a vehicle or the gator pretty quick. Hopefully they ate some of the cats and none of my brood bass.

Thanks again for the replies and feedback.

One thing I read, could have been here on PBF or another publication, was that if you wanted to grow big fish, feed in one spot. The dominant fish will hog the feed and get big. If you wanted more uniform growth, diversify feeding areas so the younger, smaller and more timid fish get some of the feed.

Don't know if this is true or not. Maybe one of the experts will chime in on feeding frequency, locations, spreading the feed vs concentrating, etc.

I have always hand fed, because I was just wanting a little better spawn from my initial stocking. Was not trying to grow trophy fish. So I spread the feed along the perimeter of the pond and tried to throw it from 1-5' deep. I also targeted some in the very shallow where I saw the very small fry feeding. They would peck at the pellets and eventually as they softened would consume them, if the larger fish did not find the feed first and eat it. I also fed a combo of floating and sinking, trying to make sure and only put the floating on the bank that would float it across the pong and not up onto the bank (we often have wind in Kansas).

Just what I did. Not saying it was the right thing or maybe the right thing for what I was trying to acomplish.

If you want growth of some of your more timid fish, might want to hand feed in some other spots different from where the feeder is throwing.

Hopefully experts will comment on feeding methods. I would like to know if what I am doing (or will start again this spring) is a poor way of doing it.

I guess my goal was to try and promote a more natural type of feeding environment with just a little suplementation to natural feed, rather than trying to grow big fish on pellets alone. This is likely to be a different goal than many that feed their fish.

Does cut bait, say like the head of a BG, work for CC? Any fishing I did for catfish was when I was a very small kid and mostly observed what my older brothers and cousins did on the river with limb lines and trotlines.

I've got CC stocked in my pond that will need to start harvest on later this year, so need to learn how to catch them.

I think I've caught at least one CC on just about everything that I've tried except stink bait. Cut hot dogs, shrimp, pieces of cut BG, beef liver, etc. The only thing that I haven't tried is a DuPont Spinner.

I had a trot line in the pond all summer a couple of summers ago and just kept rebaiting the empty hooks. I'd catch a CC once in a while, even on a piece of hotdog that was in the pond for a week. No rhyme or reason to it.

sunk 3 of these in about 4.5" of water yesterday (PVC pipe is 5'). I've got the materials to sink 9 more of these, which should do me for cover in the pond with all the other stuff we have in it.

I knew it would be, but it's funny measuring it from the water and not fishing it, but our pond is DEEP. They ended up going much closer to the bank than I had envisioned. I'm probably going to go with 1" pipe and longer sections to put the rest in 8'-10' of water.

Do you plan on having the fish use them in the summer or the winter? If your pond is not aerated, there's the possibility that they will be below the thermocline in the summer, where they can't be utilized by the fish during that part of the year.

Didn't really have a plan on that, I just wanted to put the others <10' but deeper than the 4-4.5' that I was able to put these with the marker pipe.

We don't have an aerator, but have a gentle sloping rip rap spillway and we're going to run our solar pump during the summer. I don't have the funds to buy one myself right now, and my FIL (who actually owns the property) doesn't want to buy one.

I have discussed with him why it would be good to have one, especially with how deep our pond is. Most of our cover was set in 6-10' of water now that the pond is full. He didn't want to mark any of it with above surface markers (which I ***ch, cried, urinated and moaned about considering I do the most fishing and some of the upside down stumps are hang up magnets).

He reluctantly agreed to let me sink this with like 2" of the pvc above water to mark.

I may consider just putting all of these that I can make 5' or less.

Messing around with kiddo this evening and FINALLY caught one of my redear again (you have no idea how much time I've spent in the last month trying to catch a few to get an idea of growth). Approx 7" and 6-8 oz. I'm happy with that.

Interestingly it was like a foot under the surface right in my feeder spray range about 10 minutes after the feed was eaten. It's like 15 feet deep there fwiw.

I'm almost going to assume that it was up eating like the rest of my fish...I'm sure that's the most interesting thing in my fishes' day when the feeder goes off though

In a few years, after those LMB have spawned, overpopulated and grown (not feed trained) they will take out the low supply of smaller CNBG with the 3:1 ratio. You should get a few monster gills, but the catch rate will become pretty infrequent.

Wow, entertaining a friend and his kids today and one of his sons caught a 10.5" bluegill that weighed 1.25 lbs. That was probably the biggest pure bluegill I've ever held. And I think that it was a female too...

Also fairly certain it was this fish that I caught in November. It liked female and had the same shape (though she wasn't as fat in November).

This one was about 9.5".

I actually fished for a decent amount today just to get an overview of my bluegills.

Most all of my stocked gills (whether male or female) are 8+" and fat. A few of the 30 or so I caught were 10 or better. All of the fish look good, and there are fish from 3" to the largest that are all in good shape.

My bass are 8-10" and looking in good shape, but not sure if I'll get a spawn out of those this season. I've not observed any spawning, but my pond is a little dingy (18" or so vis) to see much.

My redear are starting to spawn and the original stockers are 7-8". Not as good of shape as the bluegill, but the bluegill are fat. The fish are thick, but not really oval shaped. A pic would be nice I know, but best I can describe is from the side they kinda look like a thick stocky bass (though obviously not as thick).

Catfish are around 10" and starting to make an appearance at feedings. Not really big enoug to harvest.

Baitfish are plentiful, both the GSH and my FHM, even the gold colored ones.

My thoughts for this year are to remove every catfish I catch and get them out (I guess "ideally" I'd like to have 50 or so at most by the end of the year).

But my question is about my bluegill. Should I catch and harvest all the "medium" sized bluegill that I can? Like say all the fish I know are not first gen fish and that are too large for my bass right now? That is my inclination, but I didn't know if it was really necessary. The bluegill did have several spawns last year with no predators in the pond, but I did stock a relatively small # for a fed 2 acre pond (500 total).

Thanks in advance.

While not the longest or biggest bodied I got here's one that is probably in the top 15% or so in my ponds original stockers.

wow, within a few months the golden colored fatheads are nowhere to be seen and I'm seeing LOTS of 1"-2" bluegill. Could those be fish from early spring spawns or are those fish from late summer/early fall spawns?

I'm in a similar latitude as you and I suspect you've had (at most) one spawn this year. If your BG are 2" they are from last summer/fall.