As you catch the bass quickly measure their total length. It might not be easy to weigh them fishing from a raft but get a length measurement. You can evaluate the weight as a general idea of body weight. Always take along a note pad to write down the info. Data over time will help you best manage the fishery to improve it.
I suggest that you make yourself a simple measuring board to help you quickly measure the fish length. I made my measure board from 1/2" wood as a shallow box (similar to a shoe box lid) with the ruler embedded into the bottom. Ideally you want the board to hold some water to reduce slime removal from the fish. Some have used 1/2 of a PVC pipe cut lengthwise and added end caps (see links). Length measure device could be just sharpie marks on the bottom of the device, but some sort of official rule would be best. Others may have good ideas for a simple fish measuring board.
Whatever you do, DO NOT ADD CRAPPIE.....you have way to small of lakes for that if you believe any of the volumes of literature published on the subject.
Crappie are hard to control and easily overpopulate based on our experience in a 6.5 acre BOW. BM61.
The pond currently has plenty of fish species to complicate management. Crappie would further complicate the amount and type of management needed. It is very easy and cheap to add fish but extremely hard and costly to get them out once they become established. The cost of removal accelerates greatly as the acres of water increases.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 01/25/1811:02 AM.
aka Pond Doctor & Dr. Perca Read Pond Boss Magazine - America's Journal of Pond Management
Try all alternate means of assessing your fish situation. Catch results (creel data), do a seine survey (see threads here) , put out a fish trap and see results and do a visual inspection (slowly walk the banks and make notes of what you observe (take pics). If you decide to catch and keep a fish then look at its stomach contents. These can be done for little $ if you can't get an ES survey.
Okay thank you every one I really hope that i was fishing in the wrong spots for bass and there are larger bass as there should be with the forage base.
Pike as you know are predators and often select larger more slender bodied prey such as perch and bass compared to wider bodied sunfish. Notice that YP & LMB have very similar body shapes when both are smaller (<12"). Pound for pound I doubt that pike eat more pounds of fish per year compared to LMB. However both eat significant amounts of fish each year.
For me it would be very educational to see, learn the food habits of a pike and a LMB both at 4-5 lbs from the SAME water body. IMO the big difference of predation impact between the NP and LMB in northern waters is the NP will ultimately grow larger and then eat larger fish than the LMB. This means the NP could be cropping too many LMB thus allowing more numbers of sunfish to survive in a pond-lake. Does this pond with the NP seem to have too many BG - sunfish? If it does the NP could be one of the contributing factors.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 02/08/1810:07 AM.
aka Pond Doctor & Dr. Perca Read Pond Boss Magazine - America's Journal of Pond Management
no not actually a lot of bluegills i see schools of them in the bays under the brush but its like 200 every 70-80 yards of shore line and those are all very small like 1-3 inches at most and we catch very few bluegills and the most the ones we catch a big 8-10 inches which this year I will be releasing them over 8 inches and under 6 but Also i fished this pond all spring and summer and never evan thought of there being pike in there so who knows what else is in there and what size i really hope this means that there are bigger bass. if I can this next week i am going to get some emerald shiner from the bait store and set tip ups from 9-6 feet of water at different depths to try to cover a big span to see if maybe because of fishing for perch I wasn't catching bigger bass and to see there are more northern in there. did i do the right thing by doing CNR
its just if there a population of pike i am surprised how well the perch population is cause usually there is a constant battle with pike eating perch and lots of them
The biggest pike could be preying on or cropping the 10"-12" bass? If a large pike ate just one bass among those in his weekly diet that would remove 50+ LMB per year. Those 50 LMB would have eaten around 10,000 - 15,000 sunfish-BG per year.
aka Pond Doctor & Dr. Perca Read Pond Boss Magazine - America's Journal of Pond Management
Hi guys So this spring has produces a good hall of 8-12 inch perch but yesterday we caught 21 bass 12-18 inches and saw 3 different bass graduating eggs and fry ( could actually see the little baby swimming around we let those bass alone ) we also saw a school of 17 bass swimming to gather I had stocked some true bluegills and they are competing with the Orange spots I actually fished the perch only pond and left the perch alone in the 8 acre pond and this gonna be the pond I do the most fishing in now because of the species diversity i hope to get the raft out and find the deep hole to find walleyes and also see if i can find the crappie there also supposed to be in there.
thanks for the tip matzilla i just hope i can get to the spot from shore for now there is supposed to be a 20 foot hole i need to find that to find the really big fish
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