Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Raising Forage and Bait Rock bass (Ambloplites rupestris) perfect forage?

Around the great lakes and in larger inland lakes there are healthy populations of rock bass. They grow similar in size to panfish, but have more slender (fusiform?) bodies. When young I imagine they would be a great forage source for big bass.

I hear nothing about raising them in fish farms, not much online about how well they reproduce in ponds or how many offspring could/would survive. They are typically described as being in moving streams near deep holes and hiding under cover of rocks, but I have caught them routinely in the same habitat where bluegill/sunfish live, mucky bottoms, shallow waters with vegetation (clearly no current, no deep holes and no rocks).

They are fun to catch, scrappy fighters, and seem to tolerate muddy bottoms and more turbid waters.

Since they probably can't be sourced commercially, I would be eager to hear if someone who has smaller forage ponds (where they could do rockbass and FHM/Shiners only plus insects, crayfish, etc and where they could observe spawn success and create a sustaining population) could make it work well.

I've witnessed them being aggressive and hitting anything even things too big to fit in their mouth, this may be a spawning specific aggression feature but I think they in many ways are the GSF of the bass family.

I see there is a southern variety that may be more suited for warmer ponds: Ambloplites constellatus, a species of rock bass from the Ozark upland of Arkansas

Great Lakes Rock Bass adult:




Young rock bass:




Ozarks Rock bass (pretty fish!!)

I've stocked 9 into my pond and have yet to see them reproduce. I think they need clean gravel to spawn over to have much success. I know fisheries biologists hate them in SMB lakes as they compete heavily with the bass and are horrific predators if the YOY bass. I stocked them banking on the fact they wouldn't spawn.

Horrific predators of YOY...

This might be helpful for those who need a slow reproducing or nonreproducing agressive put/take predator (in this case smaller bass that has serious eating instincts) to make a big dent in the booming crappie populations in their small lakes and ponds

Of course in a 1 acre or bigger pond you would need to source 90 or more not just 9.

Crappie YOY would not be nearly as vulnerable to rock bass as SMB are. I just don't see them being a perfect forage by any means...

I could be wrong but I would expect water clarity and cover is the biggest factor to keep crappie in check with a good predator population.