Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations 1/4 acre pond

just moved recently by friend of mine and in his backyard he has a 1/4 or 1/3rd acre pond he said hes never stocked it its been there for 20 plus years and has bg and bass i went yesterday and put on a night crawler and caught 3 bluegill 2 ok sized and 1 baby but i could have caught much more i only stayed for 5 minutes or less just to see

im curious if the fish are stunted in the pond and if i buy a 50 pound bag of fish feed pellets for them if it would greatly help them grow bigger and more healthy?

wed like to have it a good bg pond to be able to eat them and catch them as bait for catfish if fish are stunted can they grow once they start to receive proper nutrition? or are they stunted for life once it starts?

ill take some pics of the pond today to show you guys if you think it looks healthy

You have no idea what condition the fish in the pond are in from five minutes of fishing.
There’s a lot of good info here. Spend some time reading.

They will definitely respond to feed.

You can't get back lost growth potential, but the fish can still grow from whatever their current size is. In other words if you were to try and raise trophies, any lost potential would likely never let them achieve trophy size. But whatever their current size and finish is, additional feed will likely improve it. Unless they already have all they can eat, which is unlikely.

yeah i just wana be able t have eating sized fish i keep catching 4 t 5 inch bgs nothing big so gonna try and feed them curious if i should add some type of pond fertilizer.

the pond has a few small bass too i should try to take them out tbh. i tried to explain to my friend that the smaller pass are hurting the forage for larger bass. he wants to have a pond that small told him hed prob not want more than 8 bass in his pond if he wants them to be big

also curious about throwing a few cats in there im thinking it couldnt hold more than 15 due to having to many fish we went out and fished it again i caught about 12 bluegill in 30 mins harvested 5 of them not sure how many are in there so i didnt wana harvest to many.

i know they have to b hungry because every bluegill deeply swallowed my hooks and i had sharp cricket style hooks which tells me they dont have much of a food source

but about the catfish whats something i could put in the pond t let them spawn if we decide t add more cats?

also i think i need to take out some bass not sure how often the bass are reproducing but the ball wont have any natural predators and will end up eating lots of bluegill and being small stunted fish luckly my friend enjoys eating them so ill catch them for him anything under 12 inches and 1.5 pounds ill try to take out id like to take out 5 if i can

i realize you have to have predaters to eat the bluegill so they dont over populate but the small stunted bass wont be able to eat 4 inch bg but the ones above 2 pounds can i think thatd be a decent plan i hope to only have about 8 to 10 bass in the pond max if possible

With bass, the baby cats won't have a chance. They are slow and go everywhere in a school. Easy pickings for everything. But, that's just Mama Nature at work. Better to get about 15 to 20 six inch cats.

My following comments are based on IF the pond is overpopulated and the fish have stunted. A lot of people find that their pond is out of control (stunted) and start over which means killing off the pond a starting fresh, usually because they desire big BG or really like fishing for the LMB for sport . I do not hear much about utilizing the situation to grow out cats. It's probably more complicated than just adding some catfish, but with some targeted harvesting of the LMB and bucket stocking some sizable cats from other waters you could take advantage of an overpopulated pond. It's kinda like putting minnows in for a year or so to build a forage base for BG and LMB except your forage base is the BG and LMB for a larger predator...the cats. The cats knock the heavy population of BG and LMB down and grow like gangbusters...you eventually harvest the cats out and the BG and LMB populations come back...it would be a dance. A put and take flathead pond comes to mind. A small pond would lend itself to this approach, I would think. And, Matt, from other posts I have read of yours...you tend to fish a lot and coming up with larger cats to bucket stock might be right up your alley. Something to think about.

yeah we caught a 5 pound bluecat last night at the creek setting bank poles and thought about putting her in the pond but she was pregnant so id dint wana do that wanted her to be able to lay her eggs so more fish have a chance to survive and re stock the creek

tbh the main goal to us is having good sized eating gills and a few small ones as bait i prob plan to harvest about 10 a month maybe more each time i go fishing i wana take about 4 t 5 live gills out for flatheads