Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations relative weight question.....again

Pond bosses, Again from my 60 acre gravel pit that is not producing giant largemouth like it uses to. I did my first relative weight study with 9 bass I ended up cleaning, fished 2 hours this morning between letting a few go and those that got off probably had 20-25 fish. No fish greater than 16" caught and only 1 16 inch bass. So here goes, bass 1: 12"-1.3
Bass 2:13.5"-1.2 bass3 12.5"-1.0 bass 4 14.5"-1.7 bass 5 15.0" 1.8 bass 6 12.5"-15oz. Bass 7 14" 1.5oz. Bass 8 13" 1.0 bass 9 13" 1.1oz.........When I took those to the charts it didn't look too bad, however if you look at the 2 longer fish their weights start to drop off which would explain so much, like there is enough food to be healthy at 13" but once fish get to 15" they just can't make that next leap. Also probably the rarest bass in my lake is 18" 3 1\2 pounded that nice solid fish u like to see, you can luck into the occasional 5lber but no 17",18", or 19" fish. Are my findings pretty common. Thanks

Is it possible for numbers of bass and size of large bass to b down at the same time???

It sounds like

1) Is it a possibility that the larger LMB are being caught and kept?

2) The larger LMB are getting more and more hook shy? Being in the BOW for a longer period of time, they are getting educated.

RW's for the 12"-13" fish are average for a non-fed, normal "wild" BOW. There's a big difference between public and private waters in regards to the numbers and sizes of individual fish.

It's post spawn, when the RW's are the lowest. They should be increasing as the summer progresses. Keep a log and see if they increase.

1. No; nobody fishes much there, I don't even see big fish, used to have wolfpacks of 2-4 pounders come swimming past my dock. It's 60 acres I seriously doubt every big fish won't bite. During the spawn you should still expect some big fish even if they were wary. Fish should be replacing those big fish.

2. There should be a better mix of 12-18 inch bass, my neighbor who uses zebco 33 crap fishing tackle used to catch 18 inch bass everyone used to catch big fish.

3. Would 2,000 8-10 inch walleye have a big affect on 60 acres of water they were put in 7 years ago.

I may expose my ignorance but it wouldn't be the first time. You have said that the GC have eliminated all the vegetation. As I understand it, if you don't have much cover, then the LMB are only getting small meals. Some of the big bass you used to have have probably died off or been caught and you are overpopulated with small LMB which don't get much fishing pressure to cull them. I have also heard that low vegetation means that you will have fewer stunted BG and that the ones who do escape the LMB could get to be large. So how is the BG fishing? How do those numbers look? I am trying to understand how small ecologies work and what the best management practices are.

In that vein, are there 4-5" BG? Catch a few and use that for bait. Should skew the catch to larger LMB. If you're only presenting something of interest to a 12-15", then the big girls will not waste their time and energy. If the RW fall off on the large side, they should be hungry if they are there.

The few largest bass should be pretty healthy and plump from eating small bass. I think the money for 2000 walleye would have been better spent on tiger musky or even regular musky. Musky will eat bass better than walleye eat bass. Since you need significant cropping of smaller bass maybe stock 2-3 musky per acre. Then when bass sizes and RW improve start removing musky to numbers near 1/ac. Or have boy scouts come and fish and put a small bounty on every bass caught and kept. This helps you and puts a some dollars into the scouting program.

Yes Bluegill are nice size I have a school that lives by my dock that I feed, but not the nearly the numbers that used to be there, used to be lots and lots of 3-4 inch bluegill and lots and lots of 7-9inch black crappie. Now there are big big crappies. There was one spring before all the weeds were killed I would catch a crappie on every cast with just a small tube jig, now you have to work for them.

Soo hard to tell in that big of a BOW! You need a shock survey or need to go do some scuba diving and check it out!!

RC

Well here is another thing-off my dock its 6-12 feet, I have placed tons of trees since I've been there, probably an area 20 yards by 30 yards, it's full of bluegills yet I never see any huge bass swimming around, I'll even hook a bluegill toss it over those trees, you would think if there were some 5-6lbers lurking they would take it, but nope. I used to catch 5lbers all the time......from my dock, once took a 7lber on a freaking jerkbait, my dad took back to back 5lbers on a red eye shad....from the dock. It's weird it's like numbers are down too cause you would think if there were too many bass and not enough food you could just stand there and whack them, but that's not the case. It's like the lake has the right number of bass, but they are stuck at 15" you catch these old looking fish every now and then that have big heads and are 15-16" long. When you lose vegetation can the entire fish population of a lake all species just go way down, cause that's what it seems like, In-fisherman just had an article about that.

Like maybe it just needs to be stocked with lots of bluegills and some F1 bass..........

I mean there are lots of hypothesis with regards to my lake.......but this is the one that makes the MOST sense to me based on hook/line and the good old eye test. 2005 Water Stargrass showed up and summer of 2005 provided lots and lots of habitat of small fish, 2006 water stargrass still there measures start to be taken, by late summer 2007 weeds are eradicated every last one, what did this do. It allowed incredible spawns of all species of fish this includes, gizzard shad, bluegill, crappie, yellow bass, and largemouth bass. With the weeds totally gone it's an absolute buffet for the bass they eat up everything and all of sudden people are catch 6lber, 7lbers all the time. This lasts till about 2011 then slowly and steadly the big fish disappear from peoples catches. Scores of small bluegills are no longer seen, black crappie catch rates drop dramtically. The big bass literally start to starve and die of old age. A new population of bass emerges with just enough food to be healthy at 12-14" but not at 18". That's my theory.

The theory sounds pretty plausible, but stocking forage and new bass won't cure it, unless you have very deep pockets - do you have any idea what 180,000 Bluegills would cost? You'd have to get in touch with the DNR to get a stocking permit because it's a public BOW, correct?

You're better off to remove any LMB that you catch that is above the legal minimum size. But, you won't be able to do it alone - you can't harvest enough to make a dent. Maybe an electroshock survey when the LMB are in the shallows before the spawn next year, and remove 1,800 to 2,400 pounds of LMB, but how will you get a permit to do that since it's a public BOW?

That's what I mean can the populations just drop. Will they recover, can you stock annually to compensate for this? Like what if you stocked 5,000 adult bluegill every year, bluegill just big enough that 12' bass couldn't suck them down. We have a lake budget so there is always money for stocking.

Eat lots of small bass and encourage everyone around the lake to tie a cement block to their Christmas trees and start building forage habitat? You can pressure can a lot of small bass and they make wonderful fish cakes and tuna fish replacement protein all winter long. Put up a tree stand over the lake and wait for your shots at GC?

You know what Bob Lusk always says. As your habitat goes so goes your fishery!! He always says habitat is key to a proper fishery! And bluegill are key for your LMB to eat!

Spice I think your very close to being right! The bigger fish either died off slowly or people started catching and keeping them maybe both??

Here is one example of good habitat. I bought my pond in 2009. All I had was dink bass about a foot long. I started keeping them and replacing with new bass ones I felt were not stunted. I never saw any type of schooling fish on my pond and now the last 2 years I have had big schools in the middle! Well after I listened to what Bob had to say about habitat I put 6 more brush piles in my pond a pile of concrete a post with 5 different tires sizes on it and randomly put a few single tires around the pond just under water in the shore for minnows and such!

Now today here is what I have in my 1 acre pond 4 years later. I know on your size lake it's gonna be a lot harder but you got to start somewhere if they are not going to let you have the weed cover!!

No this is a 60 acre PRIVATE LAKE can do whatever we want. Why would I need 180,000 bluegill, I read a Bob Lusk article of a 50 acre lake in Texas he helped and they stocked 2500 ADULT bluegill and started keeping all the small bass.

Was the lake Bob spoke of devoid of all vegetation like yours? Remember, a LMB will eat 10 lbs of bluegills just to gain one pound of weight.

The article is "harvest-a success story" by Bob lusk.
50 acre Texas lake no cover, 1500 bass removed 2500 adult bluegill stocked, more bass removed in later years, check it out

"harvest-a success story" by Bob lusk.

http://www.bassresource.com/fish_biology/harvest.html

I read it. Just what everyone has been saying...remove the bass. Lots of bass. Add forage. Be patient. Remove more bass. Add slot/limit as progress is seen. More patience. Add predators to help harvest smaller bass. Five years to trophy lake status.

I didn't see where the lake in the article was devoid of vegetation? In my opinion, that's an important factor to consider.

No somewhere here said it would take 180,000 bluegill. I talked with a fisheries biologist and he told me as long as you can get food to your bass you can grow trophies, regardless of habitat. Soooooooo what I'm saying is what if every year you just budget to add 5,000 adult bluegill every year. Obviously you are gonna put some habitat in, but the bottom line is getting food to your predators. Right.

You have too many predators! The real key to larger bass is reduce the total number of them. Supplemental stocking is secondary. If you wanted to make the bass grow without reducing their numbers, then you might need the figure Esshup came up with.

Harvest harvest harvest harvest. Depending on your creel survey, you might need to remove 30-50# of LMB per acre. It really works...well, at least it did for the guy in Bob's story and it also did for me, personally, though on a much smaller scale.

You have to get that food into those bass....you attribute the decline of your lake to the eradication of weeds...well, those weeds are still missing? Then how will you establish a new forage base, if all those hungry, little bass gobble up the BG fry before they grow to a size adequate to grow larger bass?

Two ways.....add massive amounts of forage ($$$) to try and prop up the fishery, or reduce the number of hungry mouths competing for the forage you have now. OR, a combination of the two. That is what most here are advising that you do. And that's exactly what Bob did in the article you mention.

There is no one, single answer or solution in my opinion.

Yeah I agree with removing some of the bass. Hard to believe I know that in a 60 acre lake you could have to many bass... The little bass tho are eating machines!!

Here is one thing this year all of a sudden I noticed on my pond. I went out fishing one morning for bass only. Well did I get a surprise when I caught like 3 generations of bass. I had 16 to 18 inch I had 11 to 13 inch and I had them 8 inchers. I was like ohhhh man time to start plucking me some bass! Those 8 and 11 inchers will devastate my forage base to the point where my bigger bass will suffer! So I started keeping everyone I caught this year to help out! Their bellies were so fat! Dang things are eating everything!! So you need to think on a scale of every bass I keep say under 13 inches I am saving that many more BG for my other bass!! Between that and maybe restocking some more adult BG things will start to turn around but it will take a while!! Throw in a few more xmas trees here and there or PVC trees and things will start to turn. Once again think baby steps here cause there is no quick big fix! But even if you put in 6 more brush piles a year making some of them fairly shallow it will start to help I think!

Good Luck man,
RC