Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Spotted bass

Very early in my pond planning here - just spending some time reading and thinking.

I am interested in stocking spotted bass. They seem like the perfect small pond bass sub species to me, especially in the mid south. They have completely taken over several large bodies of water in the south that I'm familiar with. This leads me to believe they are extremely efficient predators and breeders.

Their typical size seems to be a good for for a ~1 acre pond. They fight similar to a smallmouth, but aren't as finicky.

They are also very impressive when dipped in flour and given a dip in hot oil!

Anybody have any first hand experience with spots in a pond, or have any info to share on possible good forage bases, or other gamefish that would make a good match?

try doing a search on the site. the topic has come up once or twice

Mr Matt, if ya wanna search threads about those SB, google Spotted Bass/pond boss. That seems much more effective than using PBs search feature. Good luck. We all like folks doin something a bit different.

In th '50s, I caught a fair number of small black bass from an irrigation pond near Rio Linda in Northern CA. I believed they were neither LMB nor SMB, but my father insisted they were LMB. A few years later, I started finding articles on red eye bass and Kentucky bass, so I figured what I had been catching were black bass of that type. They were scrappy little bass of about a poind or so and provided some very good fishing, at least for that area.

Here ya go. Been there, done that on the searching for information. Don't have any first hand experience but I also think they might be a fit for what goals I have. I would like to have numerous one pound BG and numerous 2-3 pound bass. I'm not into trophies. I want pan fish.

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=397050

Yeah, I searched but didn't find much. I'll try that Google search. Thanks for the replies so far.

Easiest way to ID a spot (without counting fin spines) is that the jawline stops even with the eye. LMB goes past the eye and SMB stops short. Spots almost always have "tooth" patches on the center of their tongue, but not 100%.

matt, i agree, they have taken over several larger reservoirs in my area. west point lake being one of them. i dont really fish anymore, but back in the 90's west point lake was full of lmb. if we started catching spots on a place, we would pick up and move. now a lmb is very rare. they about wiped out the threadfin shad.

im not sure how much this affected the lmb's but white bass and stripers were stocked about the same time as the lmb decline. there were always hybrid bass in there.

i know that was useless info, but with that being said, i would guess they would do fine in a pond if water quality suited them. my friend owns a quarry. the operation just shut down and they are thinking about putting spots in it.

Yeah, it's a long list for sure. Basically all of central Alabama and Georgia except for TN river impoundments, I suppose because of the grass and/or deeper water. A little further north, the water gets a little cooler and it seems like they co-exist a little more with the native smallmouth. The ozarks lakes and dale hollow, etc seem to still have a good population of smallmouth and spots.

Anyhow, I think they'd be a great pond fish.

It sounds like you may have to decide if you want spotted bass or LMB/SMB. It doesn't sound like you can be sure the SB will be compatible with the others in any given pond. It also sounds like they may be “poor keepers” in that they consume a lot of food for their weight. For those who have a spare pond, they might be a nice fish to experiment with. The pros may out weigh the cons. I'm an impatient sort, and I'd rather catch a few 1 – 2 lb bass every time I go to the pond than a lunker every 10th or 20th time I fish. But I've never been able to do either, so I'm just speculating or day dreaming.

If you look at that link that I posted there are lots of other links to information on spotted bass within that thread.

From what I have read, spotted bass are very "catchable" because of their aggressive nature.

It's puzzling that there's so little info on how SPB do in ponds or on how any of the other numerous varieties of black bass that exist in the wild and could be stocked do or have done. If they can't be bought from a fish farm, they could be established in other ways in ponds in the areas where they are native.

I would think that human nature would lead to many more varieties of fish being available I'm puzzled about SPB in much the way that I'm puzzled because no hatcheries raise pickerel. And the grass shrimp P. kadiakensis – why are they so hard to find? And why does it appear that there is only one place in the country that supplies paper shell crayfish? Is it because the interest and demand isn't there, or is it because the industry hasn't kept up with the demand?

Thank you very much for that. I'm almost through all of them.

They are indeed very catchable. Other than being frequently bait bucket stocked where they aren't native, they are the perfect gamefish in my opinion. Which is probably why folks keep stocking them where they don't belong.