Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Help!! Electro Harvesting Today. Need opinions!!!

7 Acre Lake, Stocked with F1 and Coppernose and ShellCrackers.

Has been stocked for several years. Add Tilapia every other year and Threadfin shad on the alternate years.

Lake is Bass Heavy with most F1 being caught under 18". Most BG being caught are 8" Plus.

I did not remove enough bass last two years and it got away from me. Meaning that we used to keep every bass 12" and under and I was taking about 150 to 200 pounds a year. The last two years I was just to busy and didn't take out probably 30 pounds each year.

Have Electro Fishing coming today to take approx 420 pounds of bass 12" and under out of the pond.

Now I am second guessing myself. Main objective for the lake is to enjoy with my family catching lots of fish. BG are much easier for family to catch so thats what we do most. My buddies all want to come fish for Trophy Bass.

Can a few of you sound off and give me your ideas??

First off, if you "buddies" are not helping you manage the pond(doing work), they would be last on my priority list to please. Second Taking out pounds is good if your bass heavy. Bob taught me a long time ago, it is the condition of the bass I care about. RW and food base are the keys. If you have skinny 22 inch bass, pull them. If you have skinny 26 inch bass, pull them. If you have skinny 30 inch bass, post the pics, and pull them.

In short. Pull the pounds/ mouths to feed out. And if you find the conditions of most of your fish to be skinny/low RW, pull even more.

There is example after example here on PB where the correction seems harsh, but the numbers don't lie. Pull every skinny bass and the pounds you need to remove and in one season, you will notice better looking, healthier fish in your pond.

I agree with HF, what you want for your pond is what YOU want.

I'm a beginner here so bear with me. If you remove alot of your smaller bass, your remaining larger bass will grow bigger potentially reducing the numbers of large BG as the larger bass will now be able to eat the large BG. It sounds to me that you have a very nice BG pond being heavy with LMB and by removing the overpopulated LMB your pond could swing to being a trophy LMB pond. I guess am may be restating the obvious here, but that leaves me asking...what do you want?

I am in a different group than you. My pond will be about 1/4 acre and I will be shooting for a good BG pond (overpopulated with small stunted LMB) where my size of pond is not easily conducive to trophy bass. You, however, have a much larger BOW leaving your options open. It seems like you have two basic options, given the lack of more details...Take out alot of smaller LMB to help the larger ones grow. OR, take out alot of the larger (stunted?) LMB to keep the big BG population up. Your electrofishing efforts would not go to waste either way.

Well... Thanks for the response Brian and Noel.

Not at all the results I expected today but very exciting regardless.

Good quantities of 8# plus F1's and good population of Red Ear and CNBG.

Have a few holes in my CNBG population but planning a stocking of 1000 3" to 4" next week.

All of my 8# plus F1's were over 110% relative weight so was excited about that. Still need to be keeping the 16" and under but not near as overcrowded as I thought.

Thanks again for the response Noel and Brian.

Thank you for your response.

So a question would be.... If you have 12" bass that are not "skinny" match up on relativity chart do not remove them?

I have previously removed all bass 15" and under regardless if they were fat or skinny.

A healthy, solid WR 12" LMB can never become a 22" LMB if he's culled. Per Brian, remove low WR fish regardless of length, allow solid fish to remain in fishery. That healthy 12" LMB has figured something out or possesses superior genetics and stands the best chance to become your next trophy. Congrats on your successful electro sampling!

Agreed TJ,

Bob taught me a long time ago to judge each fish on its own merits. If you have a rockstar 12 inch LMB, it understands the BOW and I would keep it. If I have too many LMB and they are all in great shape, I would release the best while still culling the right amount of poundage for the health of the BOW.

That would be a good problem to have.

Active management does great things.

Relative condition rules everything else. Trouble is with it (condition or RW) you are looking at a snapshot in time. The key is to anticipate what is next - and that is not an easy task. The creator of condition indices - PSD which gives you a better pic of what is to come (Dr. Anderson) gave the following example.

See this thread - http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.ph...true#Post426550

For LMB

This is what is suggested by Dick Anderson - the Prof who wrote the book on PSD.

Keep taking <12 in bass until the number 8-12 equals number 12-15. Ideal pond structure is 40% 8-12, 40% 12-15 and 20% 15+

This assumes good fish condition.

Another suggestion is take out all the fish in poor condition in all size groups. Note the size group that is stunted will have a much higher % of fish in poor condition.

Fisheries science early on (Dr. Homer Swingle the godfather of the subject)learned that you can get a pic of what is going on with a species by looking at the status of its forage. What this means is you can verify RW , condition and size distribution results by looking at BG/tilapia/shad etc. results. For example with BG if you are missing/short on 5 inch BG but have lots of 8-10 inch and 2-3 inch then you likely have to many 14-16 inch LMB. If that corresponds with low RW on that size LMB (14-16) you have confirmation of your problem. Another example of why you look at whole population numbers PSD is to early on curtail future problems. If you have for example 75% in number of your LMB population by electroshock survey being 10 inch healthy LMB then you are out of PSD balance and will have a problem in the future as they will over eat their size forage. So cull to meet the % Anderson provided above from the worse conditioned fish in that size strata as well.

Solid Brian and Eric...you guys are the LMB experts!

So what did the e-shock boat find? we are all dying to know!