Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Need Help on 60 acre Lake

e-shock surveys are usually done in shallower water, when the fish that are targeted for the survey are in the shallower water. i.e pre spawn for largemouth bass when they are all keying in on shallower water.

Sometimes they are conducted at night when the fish come to shallower water to sleep.

Spice, I feel your pain. I'm the chair of the lake committee in my neighborhood, and I've got a 100 acre lake to "manage". It is a delicate balance on the weeds with aesthetics vs habitat, we have elodea in our lake, and have put carp in to try to balance it. We seem to be doing ok with it now, we add carp some years, and not others.

We have 2000 homes in the neighborhood, so the vast majority are not on the lake, so we have to "show our value". We renovated a park on the lake, and put in a dock with picnic tables, and benches along the shoreline. This has been hugely popular, and has been great for the lake. The HOA board has came to us asking us to make the dock bigger, and what else we need money for. Also the cheap Kayaks you can get everywhere, are getting alot of use. You will see 10-15 out on a nice day. The one downside to the wonderful park, is that it brought in a lot of people from outside the neighborhood, and we have had to hire monitors to run off non-residents. We've also had to add the cost of replacement locks to the budget as people keep cutting the lock to the boat ramp.

We've got a group of fisherman that are involved, and willing to help with projects around the lake. We have been able to sink around 400 Christmas trees over the last 3-4 years. We have also started having monthly tournaments this spring, with the purpose to cull small bass. The winner is the one that catches the most bass under 16". I've created a FAQ type sheet explaining why we need to cull the small bass that I pass out at the tourneys. Catch and release is so ingrained it takes awhile to get that across.

Like others have said, a shock survey is a great starting point to let you know where you are, and will give you great insite. The biologist that did ours was great because he asked us what we saw from fishing and combined that with what they found. He has also been great to answer questions after the survey.

Having access to a private lake the size of these is awesome, the only problem is when you want to add forage etc, the numbers you have to add get big which means big $$. We added Threadfin shad last year, and the minimum to keep it from just being a buffet was $7000 worth, but they have made a noticable difference in the last year.

Good luck, and know that you are not alone dealing with HOA's and managing the lake.

wowens1604 -

Do you have the funds to install one or more trail cameras? You might find getting the vehicle and license plate to those cutting your lock/cable and trespassing is worth the financial investment.

Even installing what appears to be working (but really are broken) trail cameras in visible areas with a signs placed the area is monitored will deter some would be vandals and trespassers. You can find broken trail cameras on Ebay that LOOK to be working trail cameras.

Yes we have thought about the trail cams, but the HOA board is leery of doing it, with it being a semi public area, they don't want the appearance of invading peoples privacy. It's kinda goofy to me, but that is the beauty of an HOA, you get all types.

Wow! We only have about 120 homes and don't have a problem with trespassers coming into the lake. How did you get the HOA to go for the x-mas tree idea????? Ours is so paranoid that Johnny is gonna jump in and get tangled in the trees, we were able to designate a "conservation area" of the lake where we don't allow swimming, but we were only allowed to place Honey Hole type structures in there. Our lake freezes so it would be so easy to go to one of the local parks drag out 100 xmas trees each winter, but getting that through the heads of people who only want a lake that looks like a swimming pool is almost impossible. I'm on the board so I carry a strong voice, but what happens is the neighborhood catches wind of what's in the works and come out with their clubs and matchetes to stop any great ideas. SO frustrating.

We don't allow swimming in the lake, so getting tangled in a tree is not an issue. We have 3 pools, so you have to go get in one of those with all the baby pee

The trees have been a huge success from a fish and a PR standpoint. Everybody loves the idea of recycling the trees and helping wildlife. We send out a couple of emails to the whole neighborhood, and people bring them down to the park, and line them up along in a designated area alond the seawall. We pick up a couple of pallets of concrete blocks at Home Depot. We have a floating dock that we unbolt an 8'x24' section from it, and it becomes our work barge. We normally are electric only, but I crank up the 150hp on my boat, and drive the dock around the lake dumping trees in certain areas. Last year we did 150 trees in about 6 hours.

The beauty of it is people bring the trees to us.

When you say PR what do you mean? Have you been able to "prove" the xmas trees really help? (OF course they do I'm just thinking like one of my residents who knows nothing). Did you show documentation of how they break down, or any studies that showed they make a difference, are the trees placed all over the lake or in just one place or area? There had to be some people that said "what the hell are you doing" but maybe with no swimming that wasn't a problem. Like I said we have the no swimming area already in place. I wouldn't even ask for funding is the thing I would be more than willingly to do it myself. Habitat is for sure top 3 on my list of to do's but last year the Lake Committee spent close to $4000 artificial habitat; I think around 25 pieces and it seems like a waste of money to me.

The PR, sinking the trees make people feel good about the trees not going to waste, and helping the fish. We have a quarterly newsletter that goes out with an article from the lake committee in each one, and I've written about there benefit a couple of times. Also the fact that guys are getting out there and putting the work in to sink the trees shows that we are giving back to the community.

We spent abuot $350 bucks on materials to sink 150 trees, so it is a minimal expense, and that included donuts and coffee for the crew. I know the trees only last 5-7 years, but I think they are a huge bang for the buck.

So you have a 100 acre lake are you having a problem with too many small bass as well? What did your elec. shocks really tell you, anything you didn't already know? Has it improved or increased the size of your fish. The problem is none of this is scientific (feel free to chime in anyone else) so what might work on one lake may not in another and you end up spending a bunch of money with no results IMO. Personally I think it's impossible to thin out the bass in lakes our size. I fish in Minnesota, family has a cabin up there and you know what the best lakes are up there? Lakes with very, very large predators. Many of the lakes have become stunted with Northern Pike and they suck, but a few gems have really large pike in them or muskies that control things. People would spear the large pike through the ice then there is nothing to control the little pike and they eat everything up, kind of what bass do in our lakes..............

Science facts:

Largemouth have to weigh "X" amount per inches of length before they grow any more in length. Bass stunt because there is not enough food for them at that length. Either not enough food of the correct size (1/4 to 1/3 their body length depending on the shape of the forage fish) and they expend more calories catching it to eat, or not enough food period.

It takes approximately 10# of fish to put 1# of weight on one LMB.

No matter what size BOW.

In the average BOW, with good RW on the LMB, depending on the fishery goals for that BOW, approximately 20# of LMB per surface acre should be removed every year, of all year class fish combined. In stunted BOW's, double or triple that, depending on the RW of the fish, and if there is a certain age class or multiple age class of stunted fish.

To thin out fish populations, electro shocking, fish tournaments (highest total fish weight of fish under 14" in length), etc., etc., all will help.

For instance, I have feed trained fish in my pond. They are tagged. Fishing rule is all LMB not tagged are to be removed, no matter if they are 2" or 20".

Look at carrying capacity (in the archives). You cannot dump enough forage fish into the pond without removing predators or your biomass will most likely become too great and you will have water quality issues, which in turn might very well result in fish kills.

Correct I'm not talking about adding more food ie forage base, I'm talking about removing predators with LARGER predators to keep it in balance that's what any good lake (not 1 acre pond) that I have fished up North have in common its a nice triangle from top of the line predators all the way down the food chain. Here it's just a big mass of bass at the top all trying to eat up the bluegill. Plus if studies are correct (study In-Fisherman did on tracking and tagging) and a certain number of bass A. Will never ever bite an artificial lure and B. Only 20-30% will bite multiple times how are you ever going to remove enough bass in a larger pond/lake like mine to make a difference. I think this tagging study was done in Wisconsin and basically all you have in many lakes is the dumb 20-30% bass that always bite well if you remove those then what are you left with?

Have the folks who electroshock your lake also remove those smaller bass. Quicker than angling.

The electro shock verified what I suspected, gave us some of the reasons for the skinny bass, and ideas to help the situation. It also gave us a professionals diagnosis that we needed to remove bass. This is really key with an HOA lake, as you have to get everyone on board, or at least as many as you can.

Here are a couple of things we found out, and did based on the survey.

1. Bass were feeding on to small of blugill. 18-24" bass were eating 2-4" bluegill. The relative weight of our small bass were pretty good, but our bigger bass were skinny. We added Xmas trees in bluegill spawning areas to help survival rates, and also added xmas trees in areas a little deeper to try to give the BG a chance to get to the 5-6+" size.

2. Added threadfins to try to take some pressure off of the BG so that they would not get eaten so quickly.

3. Realized we needed to remove 3000lbs of bass. That is alot of fish. During the shock we culled probably 300 lbs.

4. Gives me data to take to the HOA to justify adding feeders to try to beef up the bluegill. I'm not sure if this will work, but I'm gonna try.

We are seeing better RW this year, and I think the shad are doing what we wanted.

It cost us like $1500 for the survey. We've had it done twice, about 4 years apart. I think it was worth it. We did it in the spring, post spawn, so we got a good sampling of the bass.

With the size of our lakes it is not a quick turn around, but I think with persistance, you can make a difference. Hopefully I'm leading the lake in the right direction. The advice from the biologists, and this forum have been a huge help.

If you would like, send me a PM with your email, and I will send you a copy of the survey that they did.

Yep that's a big help cause you have to convince other people, I'm a more of this is what we have to do now get out of my way person. Wow 3000lbs of bass. Do you clean them and have big fish fry's or what good lord. That's a lot of work if so. Will you have to do that every year going forward or just until the shock survey's say things look better?

We need to pull 3000lbs, we only shocked out about 300lbs. Yes, they did get fileted. We split them up among a couple of people.

We are trying to fish out as many as we can. It will be an ongoing process to keep them in check. We will probably need to pull hundreds of pounds out per year.

There are a couple of us that weigh and measure a few that we catch. We are going to start keeping a spread sheet, but it is still on the to do list.

Real quick question to those that do shock studies, what time of day do they do those because I think that would matter significantly given I live on a clear gravel pit, can they do night studies or very early a.m. studies because if they come out at 200pm on a sunny day that is NOT gonna be an accurate representation of the lake, but in the evenings in June a lot of fish move to the bank to feed. Thanks

Shock studies in lakes/ponds are best done evening through dark.

wowens1604 -

Sounds like you could do a fishing derby with your HOA kids and then a fish fry afterward.

Or hold a fishing tournament for the most bass weighed in under 16" in length. Anything over that does not count towards the total.

Have that once a month and that would remove some LMB!

We had a tourney last month, most bass under 16" was the winner. We didn't weigh them, just counted.

We are doing another tourney on the 13th with being a single biggest bass, but it must be released alive. We have one other rule, that all bass under 16" must be removed from the lake.