Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Smallmouth bass in farm pond

Matzilla, if you do transplant some, it would be best to take them from a pond vs. from a river.

+1 I agree with Sunil. Fish born acclimated to a pond environment would be best. In my case, I did not have access to pond or lake SMB so I stocked river fish. They seem to be doing well but IMO pond raised would probably do even better. We stocked a few 6 inch SMB 3 years ago and a few more 6 inchers 2 years ago. We caught nice 14 to 16+ inchers this past summer in the pond. Also caught one 5 inch so looks like we are getting at least minimal recruitment which is a little surprising as there are also LMB in the pond.

snrub - Why not use your SMB project as a story for PB magazine? Many readers will find your experiences and some pictures about this project very interesting and educational. Lusk can help you write the story. Contact him. Here are the basic guidelines for Pond Boss articles.
"Especially looking for stories about northern waters.
Don’t be afraid to write...I don’t care if you can spell, if you can write or not. That doesn’t matter. If you have a story, just tell the story. I’ll fix grammar, spelling, etc
Editorial guidelines are:
Microsoft Word document;
Single spaced, Times-New Roman 12pt font. One space at the end of a sentence. 750-1500 words. 5-7 photos, jpegs.
If that doesn’t make sense, email me and I’ll help.
Each story needs to fit the season or time frame of that issue."

When Lusk stopped by he took some pictures and said there might be a future story in there somewhere but nothing specific.

I might consider it once I am a little further along the path. Problem is, nothing ever seems to to reach a "finished" state of being. It continues to be just one long saga more like a soap opera rather than a story!

An ongoing story with updates is always much better than no story.

Snub - By my math 10 SMB into a 1/20 ac pond equates to 200 bass per acre in a RES forage pond. Does this mini-pond also have GSF it it? My math also suggests that your 1/20 ac pond is close to 45'x45'. What is the average water clarity in this limestone rock shoreline mini-pond?

It will be very interesting to see the progress for this pond. Keep us well updated.

I might buy some fall pond stock next year but in the spring I will put in a few river SMB as a bonus. I'm not sure how "river" Mississippi River SMB truly are, being they're impounded in mostly low current pools - they act just like lake SMB as opposed to small stream fish. Their patterns seem to be exactly the same, run up small creeks to spawn in the spring, then revert to hanging around rock/rip rap the rest of the warm water months, in the winter they cruise deeper backwaters.

Matzilla If you add some river smallies to your pond please keep us updated about their progress. They should spawn in your pond.

Will do bill...I should just drop in some bucket stockers in '18 and I'll tag them with individual colors to track their size and easily ID any untagged offspring. If they don't reproduce in a couple of years I'll supplement with fish truck stock.

Yes Bill that is too many for that tiny pond. I will not leave them all in there. But right now there are loads of GS and some late spawn RES and GSF. So should have plenty to eat over the winter.

My thinking was let a high density of them clean up the minnow population and the smallest of the RES and GSF fry, then move what I can catch out.

I fished this pond really heavy for a few weeks and removed all the larger GSF I could catch earlier this fall. Got to where I could not catch any, so I think they were thinned out pretty well. I did catch one 5" one with a cast net later proving you can never get them all. I also trapped with 4 minnow traps (two with larger openings) and caught what I could of the GSF fingerlings down to a point where I was hardly catching any. After having caught that many GSF I had come to the conclusion I was going to draw it down next spring, siene it and nuke it.

Then I remembered I had a cast net and started using it. After having caught hundreds of 3" RES (and a few smaller ones indicating the later spawn) I decided the GSF had not totally gained control like I had thought. It was about this time I found out I was going to get some SMB for my RES dedicated one acre pond. After having ordered 50 (what Bob had recomended) and thinking about the cost of delivery, I called the supplier and increased it to 100.

So what I ended up doing was purposely over stocking both ponds. Both have very good minnow populations. I will let the SMB grow to hopefully around a foot in length by next fall and catch the excess and transfer them to my main 3 acre pond and let them grow out there as a bonus pan fish, knowing they will not do exceptionally well or reproduce in that pond with LMB already there.

At that time of transfer, I will decide how many ultimately to leave in that 1/20th acre pond. If I can get my SMB sexing skills up to speed, ideally I would catch all I could, tag a couple of the best males and females, and just leave a couple breeding pairs in the pond hoping to raise some SMB fingerlings for supplemental stocking elsewhere. Hopefully the over stocked 10 6-10" ones in the mean time will utilize most of the mass of minnows in that pond and clean up the biomass a little more than my attemps at line fishing, traps and cast net.

At least that is the latest iteration of "the plan". Finding and removing hundreds of fingerling RES and getting the SMB this fall rather than next year kind of put my "plans" into advanced mode. Which is kind of exciting.

Water clarity ranges from 12" (VERY fertile) to its clearest this fall of a couple feet. Only cover is one very small cedar against the bank and 3 pallet structures for FHM, all removable. FHM pretty much gone though. Lots of GS.

I am fully open to suggestions. Nothing is set in stone. For me the journey is the destination so this little pond is just an experiment for my entertainment.

Good background information. It will IMO be very interesting and educational to learn what influence the SMB can have to control green sunfish. Smallies might be good predators of greenies (GSF)?.? Lack of shoreline structure may reduce GSF hiding places and help SMB catch the small GSF. With GSF present, I sort of doubt that the SMB will be able to recruit fingerling SMB unless the adults can keep the smaller GSF to minimal numbers, especially the 1"=2.5" YOY to one year old GSF who eat lots of all species of fish fry in spring.

Snrub,

FWIW IMO if you decide you are getting too many SMB, those 12 to 14 inchers are perfect for filleting and my bride and I think they are way better than LMB as table fare.

Sounds like a great project. Looking forward to following along!

Bill I have heard that the SMB are better eating than LMB, and what few smaller (gill or gut hooked) LMB we have eaten tasted pretty good to us.

But it it will have to be offspring to these stockers for us to eat them. I think I would just have to cry for a while twice if we ate one of these 6 to 9 dollar apiece fish (plus hauling charge). Once when I filleted it, and once when I ate it. After paying that much for a small fish, I feel like we ought to name them.

Sounds like a good plan. I will be interested in results. Can you try to feed train the SMB offspring ?

Come spring I will continue to feed the pond. How much and what feed I use will ultimately depend on what I observe is feeding.

I inquired about the SMB stockers and they were raised on feed as well as natural forage. Come spring I will attempt to keep as many as I can on feed.

I plan on getting both some Optimal LMB and Purena LMB pellets as the fish get some size to see if I can entice them to feed like TJ's up in Nebraska does.

If some of them will continue on feed, that should make the higher stocking rate more viable also. In fact, if they really take to feed well, I might leave more of them in longer rather than transferring half of them to my main pond as soon as they reach a size big enouh to escape LMB predation in the main pond.

my RES and SMB pond story

I have a good feeling about this endeavor. Keep good notes and history as it sounds like a very good PB article not to mention a lot of fun.

My SMB really like Optimal Bass, when I switched from AM600 to Optimal bass last spring I noticed an immediate and significant increase in my SMB eating pellets. This last fall when I ran out of Optimal Bass in October there was an immediate decrease in my SMB eating pellets even though I was still feeding Optimal BG.