Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Bought an established pond but needs work

New to the board and have been reading several threads from this board but couldn't really find an answer to my questions.

The pond is a small pond. 1/2-2/3acre roughly and 12ft deep. The previous owner stocked it with blue cats, largemouth and bluegill 20 years ago. Seems to have maintained it well until the last year when the intake system broke, didn't fill with fresh water for 8 months and basically became a large puddle. I fixed the intake, got the pond to refill and to my surprise there is fish left. Very big catfish, stunted bass and what seems to be a very small bream population. The catfish seem to be up to 15lbs and I've been told to remove them from the pond but for obviously I hate to lose big fish to took years to grow. Not sure how many there are but there's at least 5 that are 10lbs plus (seen that many at one time while feeding them). Have not seen any smaller.

So with that said here are some questions I have and sorry for being the noob:

1:) will blue cats reproduce in a small pond?
2.) do I need to remove the big cats so the bluegill pop can replenish?
3.) should I thin out the largemouth as well?
4.) if I restocked the bluegill am I just adding temporary forage that won't reproduce?

I'm a bream and bass man. The cats are fun to catch and feed but not my main thing. I'm a long time largemouth fisherman but brand new pond owner/manager.

Any advice or experienced opinions would be appreciated. Thank you

Attaching pictures and a video hopefully

Welcome to PBF!!

IMO

I would remove all those big BC if you ever hope to have a LMB pond. Appears they have over eaten the forage base already.

Remove all the LMB you can as they are stunted and never will go on to perform well.

IMO the best way to "fix" your pond would be to drain it and remove all the fillet sized fish. Hit it with hydrated lime to kill any remaining fish and let it fill back up. You can then restock fish with good genetics to work towards your LMB pond goal.

Just my 1 cent...

Again, welcome!

Bill D.

Thanks. I need to add a correction also that evidently he stocked it with blues and channels.

Well I can't drain the pond completely without getting a backhoe and busting out the damn. I have a friend with a big seine net that I'm trying to get to come over to clean house for me. Friends of mine have told me to remove all the big cats and remove all the bass, let the bream population rebuild and then add my predatory fish. It's what im leaning towards doing but I hate for this big cats to go to waste. I know it took a while to grow them. But I also know they're probably eating everything in the pond at this point

IMO since draining is not an option, anything you can do to get rid of those big BC and as many of the stunted LMB as you can is on the right track. IMO you will see the BG start to recover when you get that done.

With respect to seining, do you have brush piles, rock piles, heavy vegetation or other obstacles that could get in the way of the seine? Maybe an irregular bottom that could provide deeper pockets for the fish to hide in?

Those big BC and stunted LMB will not go to waste if you have a sharp knife and a hearty appetite!

Well I have a gut feeling I'm not going to be able to eat all the fish, lol. I'm the sole person in my household that likes fish. I plan on keeping some though. I'm really not sure how many there are.

No structure. The previous owner put no structure in the pond. Zero structure.

Been making a couple PVC "trees" to sink and have some pallets. Was thinking about making some pallets cubes and sinking them as well

Also, what are opinions on bringing in blue gill from another local pond? Have the opportunity to fish and pull out all the bream I want from a friends pond (he seines my pond and keeps the big cats. In return, I get to pull bream from his) Been planning on doing this but is there any drawbacks? Seems to be a healthy pond with big bream. Has too many bream though and that's why he wants them gone

If I had been smart, I would have seined it when I was a puddle but I was more concerned about getting it back to proper level.

Brad; I don't understand what you mean about the intake system was broken.

If it were me, and it's not, I would probably start over. Once a cat gets over 3 or 4 pounds, it rules the pond and is a voracious predator. Anything you add will be catfish food. And, they get hook shy fast. The bass are more than likely stunted due to lack of groceries and they can't regain the lost growing years.

If you want a bluegill and bass pond, you just about have to start over. You have what I usually see as an average Texas pond with no maintenance(culling) over the years.

A couple of facts that you may already know. I didn't when I got my first pond and I'm still learning after 20+ years of unlearning and experimenting.

A pond can sustain about 75 to 100 pounds of fish per acre. They swim in their own toilet and water quality, their environment, is all important. That takes work/maintenance/culling on your part. Thus, oxygen can be THE limiting factor and I've learned that the hard way a long time ago. If your pond water level drops, you may need to cull.

95+% of all eggs laid and/or hatched will be eaten before they get a chance to mature and grow to be an "adult". That's mama nature at work in the predator/prey balance that rules all of the natural world.

To gain one pound, a fish has to eat 10 pounds of forage. That forage has to be 1/4 to 1/3 the size of the predator and all fish are predators of each others babies. That size is important because it is a matter of energy expended vs calories obtained. A 5 pound fish will starve trying to catch enough minnows to stay healthy. The bass you have will probably have lost a couple of years of growth due to lack of groceries and cannot regain those lost years.

Stocking more forage/bluegills is only a temporary fix. It's like having too many cows for their environment. They over eat the forage/grass. Try planting more grass and they eat it before it can get established. The best cattle/ranch Foreman is a grass farmer who knows a lot about his soil environment.

We all shoot for a "balanced" pond. That generally lasts for a short time and takes a lot of work and sometimes cash on our part. I doubt that I've ever seen a truly balanced pond or would recognize one without a lot of observation.

BTW, welcome to Pond Boss and a dang good bunch of guys.

Thank you for the input Dave. I'm new to managing my own pond and appreciate all advice. I'm pretty much planning now on cleaning the bass and catfish out of the pond. Leave the bream and the few grass carp I introduced. Adding about 150-200 bream and let the bluegill reproduce for a season or 2 before reintroducing any bass. Thoughts?

My pond is fed by a wet weather creek/ditch that runs along the backside. It had a diverted damn setup up to back the water up into the intake pipe and fill the pond but the damn broke and the previous owner never fixed it.

Brad, it would be unusual to catch out all or even most of the cats and bass. They are quick learners.

I tried it.

Well the only other option I thought of is shocking them and sacrificing the grass carp I just bought

Maybe another option worth considering.... Your pond is not that big. A lot of folks inexpensively drain their ponds using a trash pump or a siphon system. The dam stays intact. IMO you wouldn't need to drain it bone dry. Just down low enough to make killing the pond with rotenone or hydrated lime practical.

A big welcome to the forum BlueCat.

Here are some ideas floating around in my head relative to your situation. As your pond is relatively small, some of them may apply.

My pond is about half the size of yours, was overloaded with LMB. Also had YP persisting. I added 18 BG 3 years ago, 24 GSF 2 years ago. I've been harvesting bass all along, but really cranked it up the last 2 years, removing 106 or 107 in 2015 and another 47 in 2016. I rarely saw or caught a bass late in 2016. I certainly knocked the population way back. And enjoyed every minute of it. I'm certain the sunfish have a chance now. Just today I used my pond rake in the little bit of open water my aerator is keeping open, pulling in 8 GSF fingerlings, many crawfish, and 6 or 7 bullfrog tadpoles. We haven't seen a tadpole in the pond since 2010! BG recruitment now too.

Too many bass is just that-too many bass. I have either 2 or 3 LMB left approaching 20" that I cannot catch. I'll simply shoot them one of the warm summer days when they are hanging around in the shallows.

You certainly could target the cats when they're actively feeding on pellets. Without nesting cover in the pond, you may not be getting catfish recruitment. Your LMB may be eating all the young. Killing the adults any way you can-hook and line, jug fishing, spearing with one of those ice fisherman's pike spears, shotgunning when they're at the surface, several other methods could knock them all out. Your stunted LMB won't necessarily grow to their potential, but their offspring can once the BG numbers recover.

Electroshocking doesn't necessarily result in fish mortality. If your grass carp even let you get close enough to them to be shocked (mine wouldn't hang around any kind of disturbance like a boat), they could be revived and saved.

Sorry about the way long post. Rather than poison everything in a small pond, I prefer to try hardcore management to effect the changes. If you love to spend time fishing using multiple techniques, don't object to pulling out all the stops, and can be ruthlessly patient, I think you could make quite a turnaround to your fish population. Get friends to help.

Sounds like fun to me! Good luck.

Roger

Your final decision will mostly depend on how long your are willing to wait and do extended time fish removal, maintenance, and some frustration due to complications and slow progress along the way. If you want good angling with good quality fish fairly quickly in 2-3 yrs(renovation-restock) instead of 4-7 yrs using the selective fish removal system,,, then drain it down, renovate and restock. Using the correct approach / methods in a renovated pond as suggested on this PB Forum you in Georgia can grow 8"-9" BG in two years with bass being 1.5-2 lbs after just 1 year of stocking in the GA pond. Others have done it, you can too if you follow the correct stocking-management procedures. However to do this, it takes active GOOD management practices and not just stocking and letting nature takes its course. Note -- one of the newer approaches used by the most progressive fishery managers is to stock close to 300BG to every 1 LMB. This will give you a good idea what it takes to quickly grow bass or Blucats(BC) - Food, Food, Food - pellets and forage This approach would also likely include growing BlueCats. Do some good homework before pulling the trigger on your pond project.

Lots of this progressive fish growing information has been in back issues of Pond Boss magazine and in older posts on this forum. Check the PB archives for Common Pond management Topics & Questions and for complete yearly Indexes to back issues of Pond Boss magazine. There has been some discussion and 1 or 2 articles in the magazine about blue catfish in ponds. They are a 'BIG' predator and can quickly create an unbalanced fishery in small ponds. This is usually due to inadequate forage - in terms of sizes and numbers.

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Thanks for the ideas. After reading about the pump idea, I Called my buddy who is going to come seine it and he said he has an irrigation pump. Gonna set that up a couple days before and knock the pond level down a few feet.

Have to re do my jugs I had set up to catch cats. Had 4 jugs with 50lb test, circle hooks and chicken livers. Every line was broke so pulling out my stainless steel shark leaders and attaching them. No more broke lines

I really don't want to poison it either. After its seined I'm going to keep putting cat jugs out to catch any stragglers and continually fish out the bass

You will get a real pond management education when seining an old pond. Old snags and misc junk are net snagers that allow fish to escape the net. A good number of fish are very good at escaping the seine even with good seine methods. Does your seine have a mudline?

It has always been my experience including for my own ponds, that there are NEVER as many fish and amount of quality of fish in a pond as one thinks should be there. Your pond is probably no exception. Keep up updated to your pond progress we always want to learn more about ponds. It is a good idea to keep good records of what comes out so you have a better idea of how much the pond is capable of supporting. My experience is old ponds do not support as many fish as a new or renovated pond. This is because a large amount of the overall productivity is bound or tied up in the organic slop in the pond bottom and unusable fish.

There is nothing in the pond for the net to get hooked on. Zero structure. I have been cast netting just to see what I might grab and have yet to find anything for it to get hooked on in the deepest part of the pond that I could not see when the water was down. I have no idea about the seine net. I have never used one. it will be some friends of mine doing it. It is his net and he's doing it because he wants the big cats for his 15 acre pond.

I'll keep records of what I catch now. The only thing removed so far is that one big cat. I would think this pond could support a little more given it has a constant current flowing through it and also an aerator if I want to run It

Your large night hunting, big mouth catfish may have significantly reduced the forage fish numbers and bound up a lot of the pond's carrying capacity into predator biomass. It can happen.

Remember there are not a lot of snags in the pond for the next time you decide to seine the pond in the future.

You've heard lots of very consistent advice from very knowledgeable people.

I'm not in their class, but I do have some experience and also say... For best results quickest, kill off and start over with a good plan.

Also, that wet weather creek... no chance it brings in bullheads, green sunfish and the like is there?

Brad, no need to breach your dam, or drain it completely. A 4" PVC siphon can be made very inexpensively to lower the water a great deal. Once the fish are concentrated into a much smaller area, you can fish and snag most big fish out. Once you are tired of catching and cleaning fish, spray about 600-800 pounds of Hydrated Lime in the remaining water AND all the pond basin (cats can live in mud). The Hydrated lime will turn the water gin clear, and kill every living thing in it. Let the pond refill, or wait a couple weeks for the pH to get a head start as the pond refills to drop back to normal and add some Fathead Minnow and Bluegill to what remaining water is there.

Been busy and haven't been fishing much but have got on it the past couple weeks. I've been pulling out a lot of little stunted bass. Since it's warmed up I see them everywhere. Way too many and all about the size pictured. Also caught more big cats. This one was a pregnant female. Bream have moved up in the shallows too which gives me hope their numbers haven't been as low as I originally thought

The intake from the ditch has a grate over it. The level of the ditch/creek doesn't hold a consistent level to hold any fish either. If it doesn't rain for a couple months, it will go dry

I'm shying away from killing it off right now but still considering it. Going to see how much change I can inflict this year as far as removing bass and catfish

Just because the creek goes dry doesn't mean it has no fish. Get a large rain where it flows into any BOW that has fish and they will swim upstream and live in the puddles. Then the next rain event that causes water to run the small ones can swim in as little as a half inch water.

It is amazing how mother nature can stock a BOW that a person thinks should have no acces to fish.

We have a small stream that goes dry behind our pond dam. During a spring flood it will have all sorts of fish come out of the creek and populate it. Then it goes dry again at some later date or even year. All to be repeated. I remember my older sister taking me fishing for "perch" (GSF) in that stream that goes dry when I must have been around 4. Fishing hook and a string off a feed sack for line.

There is a young guy that posts here sometimes that catches fish out of the city storm sewer. Gar King is his handle.
sewer fishing If you want a laugh search for his profile in the user list then click on his posts. He does some unusual stuff. Have not heard from him on this forum for a while. Here is a link: gar king posts Fish can get to places a person would not believe.