Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations population of bass and bluegill

i'm not sure if this is the right place to post this,its my first time. i have a 1/4 acre pond thats about 41 years old. we took a 5 month long trip due to a family emergency. when we came back we found lures,broken poles and bait boxes from some kids coming up and fishing,and ever since we haven't caught one bass not one. for about 4 years,until last year i decided to stalk it again. by catching bass and putting them in there. i have put about 22 large mouth bass from 2-3-8 pounders. there are plenty of bluegill in there still. but them and bullfrogs are about the only game fish for the bass. but from that time to this very day ive only caught about 6 bass and only one of them off a lure. they just won't seem to bite at all hardly.Ive tried every lure,night fishing,morning, about everything. any suggestions? and again sorry if the isn't the right place to post this

Welcome to the forum.

Many times adult LMB don't do well when transplanted to different waters. They have a hard time adjusting to the new environment.

You might be having a hard time catching them because of the experience they had. They grab something that has a string on it, get ripped from the water, go for a long uncomfortable trip and get dumped into a strange environment. I'd be leery of grabbing anything else that had a string tied to it too!

Also, with abundant forage in the pond, the ones that are doing well are probably eating all that they want to, and don't have room for a lure.

Try fishing with a 3"-4" Bluegill beneath a bobber, or a 4"-6" long Golden Shiner.

alright, thanks! does that mean the ones that have been bothered from the different water,won't make it? or just won't bite for some time,because when spawning season was in i counted almost 18 bass i had found nesting,one 25 inch!

If you counted that many adult large LMB spawning, and your pond is really 1/4 acre, I'd start to seriously fish for them. Your bass will eat themselves out of house and home in a short while. That is unless you want to manage for large Bluegills, then still remove all the LMB over 14" long. A pond can support 100# or a bit more of LMB per acre. If there's more, and you want to manage for LMB, then they won't have enough for them to eat to grow. If a pond isn't aerated, nor supplementally fed, it can't support more than 300-400 pounds of fish per acre. Each LMB needs to eat around 10# of fish to put on one pound of weight. Do the math and you'll see what I'm talking about.

With those fish in the pond, if you catch them a few times, they will get hook shy really, really quickly.

oop sorry about that,my pc does that alot i didn't catch that. i meant #8 i counted 8. sorry