Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations HELP Stocked bass weighing way less second year.

Lusk - “At 500FHM for a year and BG 500 per acre, that's a good number to establish a significant food chain over a year. The fatheads will reproduce exponentially during the pre-bass year.
Then when you stock those 60 bass per acre, they will grow so fast you'll be stunned.
If the lake does as we all hope, you'll see tens of thousands of fathead minnows, ranging in size from newly hatched fish up to adults. When those 3,000 (60/ac) bass are stocked, numerical odds of their demise is small, a fraction of a percent. If you stock 3 inch fish in May 2020, they'll be six inches mid-July. They'll average 12" by late September, and by November will range from 8" up to two pounds...the fastest growers.
You'll have some fish big enough to spawn by 2021. The bluegills won't grow nearly as large, except around the two feeders. The bluegills will mostly mature sexually at 3-4" and begin to spawn. People think those bluegills will grow large, but they won't, as a population. They'll start spawning within a few weeks.
I think the risk of bass being eaten, and limited bass recruitment is low in your part of the planet.
But...I can be wrong... If you get into Year 3 and aren't seeing bass recruitment, buy more baby bass of great genetics and create your own missing year class. That's not a bad thing, either. It just costs some money.””

LUSK- “”Here's another fisheries lesson, guys. Listen up.

When a lake is properly stocked in the beginning, with a sound strategy, the results are normally predictable. Nature can always derail the best laid plan with weather, too much plant life, and invasion of predators, a bad algae bloom...there's along list.

But, aside from unpredictable derailments, here's what to expect from scampbell's stocking plan for 50 ac. Let's dissect it and I'll share what to expect from it, broken down into five years.

Year One, forage fish are stocked. 24,000 fathead minnows and 24,000 bluegills. That's about 3-4 pounds of fatheads per acre. In the first six months, with fertility in the water and plenty of spawning substrate, the lake will product about 15 pounds per acre. It should max out around 40-60 pounds of fatheads per acre and sustain there as carrying capacity dictates. As that happens, some of those small bluegills will grow to 3-4", stop growing and focus on reproduction. That will take about two months. At that point, you'll see quite a few spawning beds with anywhere from 20-200 little craters of small bluegills reproducing. When the babies come off the nest, they'll compete with fathead minnows, and eat some small minnows. The bluegills will spawn in cycles, most of the summer. Within those same six months there'll be a sharp increase in tiny bluegills and overall growth rates of bluegills will level off. Around the feeders, some of the bluegills will push well beyond six inches that first year. Those will become the dominant spawners by fall. As the first year progresses, I would expect a food chain of 100-150 pounds per acre to develop. Then, when bass fingerlings are stocked at the beginning of Year Two, here's what to expect.

Bass will grow extremely fast. Fingerling bass, 2-3" in size, will find tens of thousands of tiny fathead minnnows and small bluegills. Bass that size will feed primarily on small fatheads and insects. Insects will proliferate due to healthy water and abundant fish to eat as well. Bass will go from 2-3" to 6" within six weeks. At that point, their sizes will begin to differentiate. The most aggressive, fastest growing, mostly females, will shoot to 8-10" over the next two to three weeks. By fall, the slowest growing bass will be around 8" and the best of the best will be at least two pounds, maybe bigger. Fathead minnow numbers will begin to decline measurably by fall, and bluegill numbers will continue to rise. Bass poundage will be around 20-35 pounds per acre (in theory), and the food chain will still be high. Productivity of the food chain dynamics will change. As forage fish are being eaten and converted to bass, survival rates of newly hatched fish will rise. The dynamics of that function will shift, base on how productive the water is. That medium will dictate production. In the phosphate pits, productivity stays high. Jay, Florida, has some productive soils around it, which influence nearby waters. That region of Florida is famous for productivity. So, if the water can motivate continuing spawning of forage fish, here's what to expect.

As bass grow, bluegill sizes will increase. Bigger bluegills will dominate the spawning beds, and more babies will be cranked out. When bass mass reaches around 50-60 pounds per acre, the forage fish will be approaching maintenance level. At that point, in Year Three, the biggest bluegills will be 8-9", and those originally stocked bass will range from 10" to six pounds. Of those originally stocked bass, half are boys, and will top out around 14-16". The other half, the females, expect 20-30% to be the biggest, 30-40% to be "average", and the rest to be under-performers, passive, slow-growers.

Here's where it gets fun. In Year Three, expect those biggest bass, which are now a year old, to reproduce. So, the biggest females will dominate reproduction, which is a good thing. The concern stated above is that there could be so many bluegill eating baby bass as they come off the nest, that recruitment of bass in Year Three could be a problem. That's a problem I'd welcome. That means the lake still has lots of forage fish. If recruitment is inhibited, stock 2,000 bass fingerlings and you've bought the recruitment for the second age class of bass. But, my bet is that enough baby bass would survive the onslaught of bluegills to add that second year class. Electrofish to be sure.

During Year Three, the lake's carrying capacity for bass will begin reaching max. That's when we start looking at culling. More on that in a minute. In Year Three, we expect reproduction and those baby bass fuel the need for culling. So, if bass don't recruit well in Year Three, we can push back culling until Year Four. In the meantime, we now have 6-8 size classes of bluegills, two sizes of those are the primary broodfish/spawners for the entire lake. In the other 4-6 size classes of bluegills, we expect those to grow as fast as possible, with 80-90% being eaten within the first 90 days of their lives. The remaining number of fish of each spawn will dwindle over the next 90 days...as the brood fish are showering the lake with new babies to take the place of those who gave it up for bass to grow.
As all this is occurring, threadin shad are establishing themselves in the open water and beginning to affect bass behavior. As schools of shad push into 2-3" and then 3-4" size classes, intermediate-sized bass will begin to alter their behavior and shift from exclusively littoral inhabitants into part time chasers of shad in open water. That behavior will influence bluegill behavior. Bluegills will feed more aggressively and not always have to retreat to safety in lieu of feeding. Again, productivity of the water will influence these factors as well. By the end of Year Three the best of the best bass from the originally stocked group will be 6-7 pounds, maybe one or two bigger. By now, those originally stocked bass will fundamentally be three size classes. The best of the best for that lake will be excitingly huge and pretty hard to catch. That's probably going to be 150 of the originally stocked fish, in the best habitat for fish that size. The next size class will be 3-5 pounds, and numbers will be around 150-200 of those. Considering attrition, the remaining bass will range from 1-3 pounds and will number 1,000-1,500 and average around pound to slightly under two pounds. Attrition comes as the best of the best grow larger and mouth gape increases. When that happens in this scenario, those slow-growing bass become food. Those 6-7 pound bass are now making their primary living off big bluegills and those slow-growing bass. If anyone takes time to do the math, these numbers are now somewhere between 50-75 pounds of bass per acre, which is the amount nature sustains, depending on how fertile and productive the water is at any given time. One other important factor here is the dynamics of the food chain. During the course of the second, third, and fourth years, if we had a way to measure productivity, we'd see a lake as this producing something around 300-600 pounds of forage fish per acre, per year. But, the standing crop would rarely exceed 150 pounds per acre on any given day. That's why it's so important to keep the predator/prey relationships as close to "balance" as possible. When the predators overwhelm their prey, productivity of forage fish plummets and carrying capacity for prey becomes dominated by how many mouths there are to eat a baby fish right off the nest.

In Year Four, barring any of those natural influencers we can't necessarily predict, expect major changes in the fishery. Now, you have a significant mass of bass beyond 17". And, they've spawned. Now, you have an unpredictable number of baby bass decimating the food chain at a lower level. They're eating young bluegills, crawfish, insects, each other, and snakes, snails, and puppy dog tails...whatever dares enter the water. Time to cull. Set your limits based on lengths and weights of your bass. Now is the time to be vigilant about culling. For a 50 acre lake, expect to cull 1,000-1500 small bass per year. That's work. For the remaining fishery, the biggest bass have all they can eat, zeroing in on 8-12" bass and large bluegills for dinner. Or, breakfast, or lunch, or snacks. Threadfins are thriving, but their numbers will dwindle during cool months as intermediate-sized bass feed on them heavily. Your biggest bass are knocking on the door of double-digit sizes, and maybe four or five across the lake will hit that magic size in Year Four. During this year, expect forage fish numbers to drop due to heavy pressure from young bass. Catch rates will rise, and anglers will be catching lots of 10-14" bass, with good numbers of 3-5 pounders, a rare 6-8, and maybe a 9. Bluegills will be knocking on the door of 10-11", well beyond a pound, some maybe 1.5 pounds, if the feeding program is consistent.

Year Five shows the best potential for young double-digit bass, maybe 10-15 of those across the lake. Bluegills can be over two pounds, with lots of bluegills in the 4-6" size class, if bass culling has been consistent. For the next three years, this lake has a great shot at some huge bass, with fun fishing, catching good numbers of 4-6 pounders with some 8's and an occasional huge fish.

Now, all this is influenced by hurricanes, droughts, flocks of cormorants and pelicans, freezing weather which eradicates threadfin shad, and otters. It's also influenced by quality and quantity of habitat in the lake, as that gives different sizes of different species of fish what they need to thrive. Productivity of the water will be a great influencer as well. Volume and species of plants influence a fishery, too.

It wasn't my intent to write an essay about this stuff, but I see some earnest questions and thoughtful insight.