Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations New old pond

Hello I am located in middle Georgia and have recently purchased a home with a 4 acre pond. The pond is 14 to 15 foot deep around the dam and averages 6 to 8 feet most places. The pond was built in 1976 with catfish bass bream and crappie currently in the pond now. We have fished a few times catching 12 to 14 inch bass mainly and some small 3 to 4 inch bluegill. No crappie or catfish have been caught. Bass seem healthy the bluegill all seem small. What is the best way for me to evaluate the current fish population as to wether or not I need to restock . I like to bass fish but the kids love to catch bream and catfish don't really care for the crappie to be in this pond . Any advice as to a great starting point would be great thanks in advance.

Welcome to the forum!!!

Contact Greg Grimes in Ball Ground, GA at Lakeworks.com You're pound sounds like it is a classic LMB overpopulation on the LMB sizes, but the 3-4" BG are those LMB's optimal size to eat. "Normally", there wold be almost no BG in a 3-5" range in an overpopulated LMB situation.

If Crappie are there, it is entirely possible there are tens of thousands that are badly stunted in the 2-3" range.

Measuring your LMB caught and comparing measurements to the relative weight charts can help evaluate just how "healthy" your LMB really are

After another afternoon of fishing seems I need to take out a good bit of bass. Caught about 25 10 inch ads tonight with 10 or so bluegill with only 2 being over 4 inches. Not sure if they are stunted or the over population of bass has taken its toll on the numbers. I have yet to catch any catfish or crappie out the previous owner said had plenty of both

Welcome to the forum

For the crappie try a 1/16 or 1/32 oz jig reeled in real slow. For the cats cut up a BG and put it out on the bottom or under a cork about 3' under

After trolling around pond few days and offering a variety of baits to the cats it's obvious the pond has very low numbers of cats and I'm doubting any crappie which would be great. Plenty of small bass under12 inches and out of about 25 bluegill about 5 woukd be over 5 inches not sure where to go from here.