Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Manegment

Hi everybody I am new So if there is a forum on this please let me know
so I got permission to fish in a private pond that is about 6 acres I dont know exactly how deep but it was dug out in quarry. so lots of rocks with some sand flats and some weeds on the flats. there are lots of YP couple nice BG few LGB which I haven't really tried to catch yet and a good population of pumpkin seeds. for forage so far I have only seen cray fish and aquatic insects and there are 8-9 inch perch with 2-3 4 inch perch in them we have been catching perch in size range from 3-13 and they are not skinny there is not very much to any pressure from other people. what size perch should I keep what should I put back when I can if they are big females I put them back I what to continue to catch big perch and love eating them but dont want to destroy the large perch and I cant stock any more fish or will it not matter cause of how big the pond is and little pressure is going on there I also forgot to mention that I only fish from shore and it is only one side of the 4 sides and there is only 2 spot I can get to with out tangling my lines up or falling in or breaking my leg getting to it

Tayten,
Welcome to Pond Boss...tons of good info and lots of helpful folks here. I'm sure someone will be along soon to help you and set you in the right direction.

thanks you I love the opportunity I have 3 privet ponds with perch 13 plus inches jumbo BG and LMB right out My front door and I cant drive yet so this is my fishing fix and I dont want to destroy it by keeping the perch that are the big females that are at breeding age but I also dont know if there that much forage most perch have nothing in the stomachs or they are eating 4 inch yellow perch and with all the rack in there in the stomachs and on hook I have only seen 5 cray fish. I know it could be bad but I might go to the river down the road and catch a couple hundred cray fish to let go in there pond we fish the most to help get some more forage in there I might also go catch some suckers when they come to spawn and release them in there so that the fry will hopefully grow big enough for the perch and bass caught when the 4 inch perch try eating 3in FHM they are hungry and I dont have the to spend the money to stock the pond and I just have permission to fish it I could buy some walleyes to help thin the little perch to allow more food in there and there is a good chance that the walleyes could breed in a 6 acre pond deep water silt,gravel,sand,rock, and weed but I want to be keeping the good eating size fish and not be keeping the breeding females. but I was catching 3-4 inch perch with eggs in them so dose it matter what size I keep or not

I will add a little to this, but the real guy to listen to and learn from is Bill Cody. He is a perch guru. Hopefully he will chime in.

Think hard (more like study) before you change anything. Analyze the current situation. It will be tough without a boat. Usually LMB and YP don't co-habitat in a smaller pond to well. Usually the LMB wipe the perch out, at least any recruitment of perch. They will prey on the smaller perch to well, and then if the large perch are removed, there is no more to keep the chain going.

I would guess you'll want to remove any YP that don't make a good relative weight. See the charts in the archives for the relative weight of YP. Carry a ruler and a scale with you and start keeping records. Which ever size seems to be underperforming would be the ones to cull. However, I don't know what to tell you about the large ones. If some of them are underweight, I am not sure if you should remove them, seeing that they will be the ones to avoid being eaten by the LMB.

Overall, it don't sound to bad of a scenario. If you are catching some YP that are 13", most would be satisfied with that. You might want to create more habitat for the forage fish/crayfish. That's a good investment for long term returns.

Hey Tayten,

Welcome to PBF!

I don't think it will matter if you keep a bunch of those big perch. As you said, big pond, very little access and very little fishing pressure. I doubt very seriously that your limited fishing has any chance of changing the balance in the pond. IMO go have a fish fry!

Bill D.

Since the pond has bass and perch I would focus on removing bass instead of perch. The bass will always eat too many of the perch so you want to reduce the predation of bass on the perch. IMO keep only the bleeding perch and all bass that you catch. You alone fishing will not really harm a 6 ac pond. Removing bass will help improve the perch numbers and sizes of the perch.

Consider building some sort of raft or small lightweight boat to float out to where you can better fish. There should be some homemade raft ideas on Youtube. As kids using cottonwood logs we built rafts that were good enough to get out in the creek to fish from. There are all sorts of recyclable jugs that could be used to build a boat type raft. If someone steals it no big loss. Better ask the owner if you can have a fishing raft on the pond. Wear a life preserver or have a flotation device attached to the raft.

Bill,

Interesting how two folks interpret posts differently. From Tayten's original post I envision a pond overflowing with YP of all size classes and just a few LMB. If the LMB were over eating the YP wouldn't there be size classes of YP absent? My thought was the large number of YP are preying on the LMB spawn and suppressing LMB recruitment to little to none. If that is correct then my thought is any removal of YP is a move in the right direction as the pond might be moving to YP over population and ultimately stunting. What am I missing?

Bill D.

I feel the original question is two opposing ideas, that's why the different viewpoints. The OP Wants to protect the YP, but wants to harvest them too. Depends from which side you may look.

If he just wants one or two meals, I see no harm to that. But what about 3 times a week for the whole summer. I think that could start tipping the scale in a wrong direction, if not done properly.

nks you guys IT might be a little confuising I am not the best at writing

so situation is

lots of yellow perch all different size class

LMB present but not many as of now they might be out deeper cause of water temp

Goals

good management no stunted fish

health fat fish with a good forage base

little forge noticed

perch for eating but allow enough to spawn to provide future food for next Generations and for bass forage

I think Bill was mostly on the right track

Thanks you all for your inputs everything helps

I also dont think that room is an issue as more of forage is should I catch crayfish to release in the pond and hlep the existing cray produce more forage

thank you this is a little bit of a help but there are as i can tell very few LMB and more perch I like fish for eat but want a good ecosystem enough predators that not to many YOY are surviving to over populate but enough for the remaing bass to eat and to grow to breeds in the years to come

In a bass-YP fishery you want at least 20-30 prey to each predator. Thus you want what appears as lots of forage with few predators. From a very limited analysis of the fishery species and numbers, nothing definite can really be recommended at this point. LMB always outperform YP so removing some of the bass each year will not severely damage this particular pond fish community. for perch harvest I would do a slot limit harvest for eating keep 8"-10" YP. I suspect there are more bass present than witnessed. It will not hurt to add some crayfish from the local creek. LMB and YP both can eat a lot of crayfish.
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There ya go Tayten,

Advice from a real YP expert. You can't get any better advice on YP than from Dr. Perca (Bill C). He has given you some good direction and still allows you to have some LMB and YP dinners! You also mentioned you catch some nice BG. Do you see a lot of BG?

Happy Fishing! Check back and let us know how it goes.

Bill D.

PS: So how long until you get that drivers's license?

okay thank you every one I am kind of hoping the when the water warms up the big LMB with move closer to shore I have questions on a catch and release only pond then to if anybody can answer those questions

My boss has a pond that is spring feed an aerated and deep 18ft with sand, silt and rocky bottom and a few sunken brush piles. there isnt many fish cause we can very easily go skunked and this pond is 60ft long 40ft wide right now it takes a pice of night crawler on a jig about 8 feet down under a bobber on a over cast day to catch many fish and any diversity. I dont know how many or how big but 9 years ago 5-6 walleyes where put in and now we are catching walleyes of any size from 7 inches up to 24 inches so I know they are spawning. Sunfish bluegills pumpkin seeds are 8-13 inches more this size than smaller, 1 large mouth bass just as a bonus and bluegill manegment, yellow perch with 10inch girth and pushing 15in long and then we have net caught 2inch crappies but none on hook yet I would relly like to get a fish tagging gun with lots of tags and start to tage the fish to see what size populations are in there and every year 10lbs of fat head minnows and 200 fingerling perch are placed as forge and a very helthy crayfish populations 1 trap soaked 30 minuete trap soak overside of dock = 40 cray fish from 1/2 inch to 6 inches dose anybody see any problems with this pond. and dose anybody know how much a fish tagging gun is and about 100 tags would be and dose anyody know ways to catch fish more regularly through the whole year cause of the areator I can ice fish and open fish through the whole winter when ice becomes unsafe I can open water fish

Bill C, what is the RW of a YP that is 15" long with a 10" girth? They must grow them big in WI, GreenBay!

A 15" YP is a very nice sized premium perch. A female YP at 15" even without eggs can easily have a 10" girth. Larger YP will have basically the same body configuration as the same size LMB. A 15" YP with late stage eggs could have a girth of 12"-13". Larger male YP tend to be more slender than the females. Standard weight of a 15" YP is 1.96 lbs.

I think part of the reason the perch get so big is there is addiquent room, food and water quaility I would say 1.5 2 pounds IDK for sure never actually weighed one but most have no to very if any early stages of eggs IDK if they have eggs cause we dont keep fish in that pond. evan with HYBG I have caught one fish all spring from about 10 times fishing and it was a 24 1/2 in walleye so there isnt alot of fisha and there isnt little blue gills every like in alot in most small ponds