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#408875 04/22/15 10:52 AM
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I have not harvested any bass out of my 5 acre pond for about 8 years. I have harvested bluegill and crappie. The crappie are huge most of them over 10 inches and the biggest part of them are 12-15 inches. I have an opportunity for a guy to come in and shock my pond to take out some bass. Most of the bass are healthy but are around 12-15 inches. Any suggestions on how to do this and what not to do since this is my first experience with shocking a pond and have just watched it on the internet. How many bass should I remove? The pond is 20 foot deep in many areas. Thanks.

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What are the Wr of the different species and sizes? What are your goals?

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My goal is to keep the pond balanced and make sure the food supply is ample. I find myself enjoying the bluegill and crappie fishing and less the bass fishing. Plus I enjoy eating the crappie and bluegill. I want to make sure the shocking and removing the bass is done correctly but I have never done it. What are the negatives of shocking the pond and how do I know how many to remove. I'm not sure what Wr stands for. I don't want to completely remove the bass but I feel I have to many by their sizes being small. The biggest bass ever caught was about 3Lbs and most are betweeen 1-2Lbs. plus the fact the bass harvesting has been limited the past 8 years.

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I am definitely not a pro but if nice BG and BCP is you goal and you dun care about bass, FWIW IMHO a lot of small bass is not a bad thing (as long as you are not trying to grow huge bass). Make sure you have plenty of vegetation and other structure for the small BG to hide in and remove any LMB you catch bigger than say 14 inches .... with this approach you might end up with nice BCP but they will probably keep yer BG thinned out pretty good. You have to do yer part and harvest the bass at 14 inches! IMO yer BG are the guys you need to protect with BCP in the pond as the small BG will be the forage your BCP targets. IMO If you remove a ton of your small LMB now you will end up with a lot of small BCP in the future.

Again, I am not a pro.....

Last edited by Bill D.; 04/22/15 09:40 PM. Reason: Typo

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Honestly, I don't believe you could remove too many bass. In your case, I would probably remove every single one shocked up, especially those with low Wr. Wr stands for relative weight.

I would also remove any crappie that came up as well. I think you will still leave plenty of bass to continue to keep pressure on your BCP and BG to continue growing quality panfish. The removal of the bass may also lead to slightly better bass growth. You could also look into stocking some HSB to fill out the missing biomass with the bass being removed. The HSB would be a great bonus fish for your fishery and also help control crappie reproduction...

Just my two cents...

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Hmmm two schools of thought.. One remove as many bass as possible and the other leave the hungriest bass <than 14" and remove > 14" . Interesting to see which approach will work.


Pat

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Thanks for the responses it has given me lots to consider. I, for some reason, have thought that if I removed a lot of small bass then the bigger bass would get bigger and the crappie would also get bigger (since there is more to eat with the smaller bass gone). Since I am harvesting the crappie then that would control the crappie. Then the bluegill is what concerns me because I do harvest the larger bluegills. A few bigger bass along with quality pan fish seems ideal. There is plenty of vegetation, sometimes I think there's too much (hard to fish from bank). I fight the vegetation with grass carp and use blue dye thinking that will hinder vegetation growth by blocking the sunlight (I have used chemicals but not often). Do these thoughts seem reasonable? I feel I still have lots to learn even after 8 years!

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Wow one guy can't get his crappie to grow at all in a 20 acre pond and Wyatt here has big crappie in a 5 acre pond?

Lets see for a sec. If you had nothing but BCP in your pond what would you put in there to help control them? You guessed it LMB.

You say you haven't taken any LMB out in 8 years?? There has got to be some whoppers in there! I agree with CJ you can't really take enough out and here is why! You know some are gonna make it and guess what next spring there gonna have more little ones and some of them are gonna make it too and the cycle begins again!!

Bill D's suggestion sounds good but in the long run if you only take out lmb over 14 inches you will be right back in your current situation a lot faster as you will have just that many more bass spawning the next spring again! And you pond is just big enough for some of those baby bass to escape and hide long enough to get bigger!

Here is the difference. Lets compare.

My pond is 1 acre. I have bass I have not kept but few each year for the last 4 years. I noticed last year I had a spawn cause I saw a bunch of little ones swimming around, but in my one acre pond I don't have to catch all of them bass cause I have 3 pound HSB and several 15 plus inch LMB and they are doing it for me cause in one acre you can only hide so much!! There just not enough room.

Where in your pond at 5 acres there is enough room for them to hide and grow up or at least a lot better chance!!

Hope that makes sense.... And that's just my 2 cents! smile And like Bill D I am no expert that's for sure just voicing M.O.

RC

RC

Last edited by RC51; 04/23/15 11:36 AM.

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I spent a few minutes checking to see what I could find on line.

Here is some info I found. A lot more out there on managing for raising crappie in small BOWs.

http://mdc.mo.gov/sites/default/files/resources/2010/05/4916_2863.pdf


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The bass are responsible for resulting in the crappie having larger sizes. Removing too many bass of the wrong size will result in the average crappie caught to become smaller. Ideally you should have angler catch records to give a good number indication of average size of crappie caught in each season. This is baseline information for management of the current bass population structure.

As the new catch records change it will be due primarily to the change in bass community structure. Larger bass will be, on the average, eating larger sized BG & BCP. So depending on what segment or size class of the crappie population that needs thinning or reduced, this will determine what size of bass that needs to be protected. Generally with a reproducing crappie population, one wants the majority of the bass to prey on small (1"-2.9") and midsize (3"-5") crappie. This most often means 6" to 11" bass to eat the smalls and 12" to 17" bass to eat mid size crappie. Thus knowing the structure of your crappie population will determine what bass should be protected as noted in the link above provided by BillD.

I say if it ain't broke, don't try and fix it. Spend your next couple years creating good baseline data for all your species. Learn about Wr (Rw), how to use them, and how they relate to the fishery. Then when you make adjustments you will better know what caused the new results.

Last edited by Bill Cody; 04/23/15 01:49 PM.

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Here is one for ya, my puddle is 5 ac one year old. BCP spawned at 5" first spring in pond, as I am catching a bunch of 5" now along with the now 8-12" parents that have been in since February 2014 . Also catching bass 6-14" now also. What size bass do I remove or leave all in for a while? Crappie probably got off a spawn again this spring

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The pond was built in 1980 but I have only owned it for 8 years and there are catfish also...the only way I know this is one died and floated to bank. It was probably about 4Lbs. I have relative that conducts natonal bass fishing tourneys and he says the bass are healthy but a little small, another gentleman that tourney fishes says they have big heads and small bodies.Truth is I do not know if it's broke or not but sometimes what I hear concerns me. I have heard concerning bass 15Lbs an acre per year needs to be harvested. Thanks for the input!

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That why WR is important! Go catch some of those bass. Take a RW chart with you a ruler and a scale. (There is a RW chart in the archives section) See how they compare to the chart. If they are way under 100 percent WR then you need to remove them if they are say 90 to 95 percent plus RW then keep them.

RW is a great way to help you understand if you have to many of one fish.

Bottom line is if your bass are 85, 88 all less then 90 percent then you don't have enough food in there for them. And if they are stunted they will never reach their full potential at this point. If you catch a 3 pounder or so take a pic of it and show it here. You can tell real quick if it's got big head syndrome! With a pic I am sure guys out here could help you a little more on that!

RC

Last edited by RC51; 04/24/15 07:25 AM.

The only difference between a rut and a Grave is the depth. So get up get out of that rut and get moving!! Time to work!!
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Caught 2 bass today one 14" weighed just at 1Lb and 12" weighed .75 Lbs. 2 Crappie 11-12" weighed 1Lb.each and 2 Bluegill 9" weighed .5Lbs. each. Seems the 14" is about 71% WR. Crappie and Bluegill seemed right on WR. Need to catch more. Wanted to post picture of 14" but from what I see I have to have my own website?

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You can use Photobucket, open an account there and utilize it. If you need a tutorial on that, look in the archives.

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src="http://i610.photobucket.com/albums/tt190/wyatt13/IMG_0957_zpsupb6phww.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo IMG_0957_zpsupb6phww.jpg"/></a>

Here's a picture of the 14 inch bass that weighed 1Lb.

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Do you ever keep or eat any fish? My guess would be this guy is a little skinny. But it's better than catching only 5 inch bass. And you have decent pan fish. Ever want ed or tried to catch more catfish? Any clue if you gave any bait fish? They would be hard to establish now, but would be an all around benefit.

One way to look at your current pond is it did balance out. And this is how your pond balances with no human intervention. So do you want to manage your pond or leave it balanced?


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I would guess that same fish looks a lot better in September than a month after ice off.

Do you have any structure in your pond ?


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This fish is about .4Lbs light according to the charts and I plan to start charting all catches. Never fished for the catfish or never seen anyone catch one accidently, I just had one die and float to bank. I do not seem to catch crappie less than 10" either but I do catch small bluegill. I do see small fish swimming around the bank on warm days, right now there are quite a few. The pond is 20'+ deep in several places.

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The crappie, this is a normal catch with many of them larger.

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That looks like a stud male. Awsome fish. His top looks thick but his belly looks a little thin. But he has Probly been using a lot of energy chasing the girls. It's a good thing you have. And it will be fun to watch how you manage it and it's changes.


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Thanks....And that's the problem I haven't been managing it (other than fileting the larger panfish)...just fishing. And that's about to change. I do not want to throw the bass up on bank and I have a guy willing to shock and take some of the bass now but I've not done my homework.

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RC51, so if many of my LMB are below 85 RW, should I remove some of them or remove some of the larger BG?

Last edited by JoeRivas; 06/01/15 02:12 PM.

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Originally Posted By: JoeRivas
RC51, so if many of my LMB are below 85 RW, should I remove some of them or remove some of the larger BG?


Hey Joe you need to remove some of the bass. Don't remove your BG as you don't have enough already if your bass are only at 85 percent. I would remove any bass 12 inches and under for a while until your RW start to creep back up to 100. Your larger BG are the backbone for your LMB to eat as they spawn 5 or 6 times a year depending where your at and that's a lot of food but they have to grow up some first! But if you have a lot of smaller bass eating them all then your bigger bas can't get bigger and then you end up with the skinny body big head issue on your LMB! And that's not good!

RC

Last edited by RC51; 06/01/15 02:47 PM.

The only difference between a rut and a Grave is the depth. So get up get out of that rut and get moving!! Time to work!!
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