Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations My ponds seemed fishless at first....

Purchased a farm with a couple spring fed ponds - one is small about 1/3 acre - the larger one is about 2 acres.

When purchasing the property was told that the larger pond had been bucket stocked by owners former husband with crappie and yellow perch and that the owners had enjoyed good fishing in years past. Former owner had gone through a divorce some years back and hadn't done much fishing or maintenance over last 5 or more years.

Large pond was overflowing banks due to a family of beavers that had dammed up the output stream. This problem has been solved as I trapped out the beavers and tore out the dam over last couple weeks. Also trapped a large snapping turtle of about 30lbs.

However I haven't seen any fish in the ponds other then small minnows. Water is fairly clear and I don't see any sunfish or bass. Have cast plastic worms & plugs that usually work on ponds with no hits. Also tried fishing some live minnows with no hits. I'm wondering if there was a fish killing event sometime in past or if the crappies overpopulated and died off. Pond seem to get good wind across it but I'm thinking it may need some more areation. Supposedly about 14' at deepest point.

Leaning towards re-stocking the pond with bass and bluegills from a hatchery this spring. What suggestions do you folks have? How many fingerlings of each would you recommend for both ponds? Any additional fish like fat head minnows?

I would want a much better idea of what fish are currently present before putting expensive & tasty fingerlings in.

I might do some shock fishing.

ETA: nice username. I was a very early VCDL
Member.

Cool - I started NVCDL and was founding member of VCDL. Farm is in Orange.

I figure hiring somebody to do shock fishing would be similar in cost in simply stocking some fingerlings. Is there a inexpensive way to do it?

What is vcdl?

Google electro fishing on youtube.
Lots of homemade setups.

Walked the shoreline today to see how it is drying out now that the water levels are back to normal. Saw a pair of pan sized crappie along shore (spawning?) so at least some crappie left in the pond.

Checked the PH and it looks to be around 6.3-6.5 or so.

Welcome nvcdl! Here's my 2 cents, from someone who became the 'new' owner of an old pond 4 years ago. Don't be in a hurry to make any changes until you have a full understanding of how your pond currently functions, and have confidence you know what species of fish are already in it. Because there is a mountain of knowledge available here at the PB forum, from dozens of certified experts. But the first thing they'll say is 'it depends'. And that's not meant to be glib or off putting. It just means, the more knowledge you have about YOUR pond, the better advice we (the PB family) can give you.
I just fished a lot and observed all I could for the first season. Get a little boat if you can, take depth readings any way you can; wade the shallows. Watch how the pond reacts to rainfalls (small type and gully washer type). Take note of what plants grow on the edges and in the water. See what other wildlife use it (frogs, turtles, crawdads, minnows, etc). Keep written notes to help you remember what you saw and when. And read other people's stories and problems on the PB forum. I found that my problems were common to a lot of pondmeisters around the country (and world even). So you don't have to 're-invent the wheel' or go to the school of hard knocks, but just give it some time to learn more BEFORE any changes. Then, when someone here asks you 'what's your goals?' you'll have a ready answer, based on what you already know about your pond.

I just ordered an inexpensive Garmin fishfinder for my jon boat.

Figure I'll see what is out in the deep part of the pond. Might be that the water is on the colder side as it is spring fed. Looked to me like the crappie I saw were spawning or getting set to spawn today so it may be the lack of fish was more related to water temp and the fact that the water levels were off due to the beaver activity.

Good idea. Keep in mind the limits of the system. Cone width at depth. Can be hard to sample in shallow water (less than 10 ft).

I think I would fish with worms and minnows on small hooks with bobbers and see what you can pull out.

Looks like I was pre-mature in my judgement.

Used a small beatle spin and caught several bluegills about 7-8" and several small bass. Lost one bass that looked like a two pounder when he threw the little hook. Caught a couple that were around 10-11" long.

Caught some more small bass on 5" plastic worms and a jig dressed with a grub. Lost one bass that broke the line after taking a plastic worm - think the line must have been damaged but seemed like a decent fish.

Also caught 2 crappies about 8" on the beetle spin.

The bass looked fairly healthy - not chunky but not all head either. It would appear there are plenty of bass in pond so I'm not going to bother stocking any more.

I'm thinking I might add some shellcraker sunfish and Fathead minnows to increase the forage. There doesn't seem to be a lot of minnows or small sunfish in the pond and it seems predator heavy.

Most any fingerlings you stock will become snacks. If it were me, and adding forage was my goal, I would add 20-30lbs of food sized tilapia (once the water was above 75 degrees). They will spawn immediately & often. The fry are perfect bass chow.

They will not survive the winter.
They are cheap in this area. Sold live by the pound. Easy to transport.
I have found no downside yet.

Eta: no downside unless you want the bass to eat BG. The tilapia fry will definitely take some predation off the BG.
Tilapia are shaped perfectly for LMB chow and are slower than the BG. Especially when the water temps cool in the fall.

You would be better off spending the $ on adult forage fish (Tilapia , BG etc.). Need to be sure what and how many you have now , first.

I pulled and ate 20 8-9" crappie out of the pond over last couple days. About 60% were full of eggs so I'm assuming they haven't spawned yet. My plan is to remove all the crappie I catch.

Caught some more bass in the 9"-11" range - hard fighters for their size. I'm thinking they might be males getting spawning sites ready as many didn't seem to swallow the bait as much as lip it a bit (lots of strikes without hooking) Haven't caught any decent size bass yet so I'm wondering if the females haven't come in to spawn yet.

Using my garmin depthfinder I can see the pond is mostly 9'-14' deep with a shallow end that is about 5' deep - was catching mosty bluegills in the shallow area. Caught bluegills in other shallower areas also. They seem pretty heathly size but not huge - 6" to 7" long (all thrown back). I was catching crappie in edges of pond about 5' near deeper water with fish staying near lily pads &vegetation. Most of the deeper/dam side of pond drops quickly into deep water about 6-8' from shore.

At times I saw what appeared to be fish (on garmin) in deeper parts of pond suspended around 5' - 6' down. Couldn't get a feel for how big they were as I couldn't get any to strike on any of the lures I tried. I'm thinking they were either crappie or female bass.

I ended up adding about 400 small coppernose bluegill/shellcraker (hatchery truck had them mixed) to big pond and 100 of same to my smaller pond. I imagine most will be eaten but hoping a few will survive to improve pond stock. I added them in a very shallow area where they wouldn't immediatly be attacked by bass/crappie.

To the suggestion I add Tilapia - I don't belive it is legal to do so in Virgina without a permit.

New wrinkle - today I took a second ultra light rod that had a shad dart already tied on it. Decided to see if the fish liked it and threw in from deep water to edge of weed line. Had a stong hit in open water and a good fight - turned out to be a healthy 10" white perch full of eggs.

Tried tossing the dart some more but no more hits from perch - caught another dozen crappie in the shallow weedy areas and a couple small bass.

IME on the Potomac i found perch tended to like worms so think I'll try some bits of worms next time I go fishing to target perch,

I've been thowing back the small bass I catch as the numbers don't seem out of control - on average I catch one evey hour or so fishing. I'm thinking there might be some lunkers that live on crappie so ordered some big crappie swimbaits to try out.

I would add adult BG and keep (target) all Crappie for removal.

I've been throwing back all the bluegill and bass. The bluegill I have caught seem healthy and normal sized. I have yet to catch a bass over a pound. The bass don't seem to be overpopulated - my theory at the moment is that I'm catching the smaller bass and that there may be bigger bass that are eating crappie as forage. The crappie are of a size that a 3lb bass could proabbly swallow the smaller ones whole.

I also put out some crayfish traps in my ponds - one with catfood - the other with fish heads. Got nada over a period of several days. There are some kind of land based crayfish around pond that build little chimneys tho.

Caught a 4-5lb largemouth on a plastic worm today. Beautiful fish - put him back to grow some more. Think I lost the same fish a couple days ago when it threw a frog at the bank.

I think my pond has another large bass as I've had my line broken twice on opposite side of pond by a fish. Been more meticulous about keeping drag looser since....

Sounds to me like you have a real nice pond!

Thanks - it does seem to be doing pretty well. I think If I add some more adult bluegill and continue to cull crappie I can improve the average bass size.

Started adding pallet structure this week using an old paddle boat as a barge - fun times!

I'll be in Sterling, Va Tues & Wed of this week. Wish I could bring you some BG.
I've been making fish Tacos every other weekend and it feels like I'm fighting a losing battle.
(I toss the males back)

Are you eating Tilapia?

Bluegill.

Added 275 4"-5" bluegill to the pond this week. Have caught and eaten at least 80 crappie over last couple months I've owned the pond. The crappie fishing has slowed down in recent weeks but I have noticed that the crappie have been getting thicker and longer. Last few crappie I've caught were all 9-10" whereas in April they were all 7-8". I'm thinking they are getting bigger eating their own fry - could be that getting rid of beavers and bringing water level back to normal levels made for a big spawn this year.

Caught another good sized bass this week. This one was around 4lbs - a bit smaller that the other big bass I've previously caught in the pond. It seems like the bass in pond are either 1lb and under or over 4lbs - my theory is that once they get big enough to eat crappie and perch they put on mass quickly but the smaller bass have had a hard time getting to that size in past due to lack of small forage. The smaller bass I've caught lately seem to be getting a bit bigger as the bluegill forage is increasing.

Caught a nice chunky 2lb bass today - first bass of this size I've caught in pond. Previously had only caught 1lb and below and 4lbs and bigger. Think my stocking of blugills is improving the forage situation in the pond. Have stocked 575 4"to 5" bluegills and about 600 smaller ones since this spring.

Number of strikes & of bass I catch is still rather low. Hope to stock 100 F1 fingerlings next year in late spring/early summer to improve numbers/genetics. Might also stock some HSB to thin out the crappie.

It will be interesting to see if any of thosef1 fingerlings survive predation

I agree with Dave and would suggest you find some that are in the 10 to 14" sized lmb to stock. And look for a lmb spawn to get the lmb numbers up.

I figure if I put in 100 fingerlings I might reasonably expect 20 to become full grown bass.

If there was a good source of F1 bass this size I might go this route. Don't know of anyone who can deliver full grown F1 bass for a reasonable price.

Reasonable price? I am no expert that's for sure but I would think growing out any fish for sale may not be reasonable to one but to another it might be reasonable. You might look to Bob Lusk or you could subscribe to the PB Magazine where you can get a resource guide for most all pond things. As I said I am no expert. But I can pass along some of my personal experience for example. When I originally stocked fingerling lmb we did 85 per acre in a pond with bg/res/Tp/TFS. And had what I thought was low survival of the lmb fry. that set me back a year I think. If I was to add lmb fry to a pond with predators I would want a lot of vegetation cover and hope they might be able to hide in it. I would also double the amount of lmb fry but " hay " like I said I am no expert.

If you have enough money you can get someone to do almost anything. However it is difficult to find grown northern bass from a supplier in Virginia much less F1 bass. The only sources I've found with F1 bass only have fingerlings (guys in NC with a fish truck or can get them shipped from various sources).

If I was going to add adult bass I'd only add about 20. I'm in no rush - the bass in the pond currently seem to be doing better as I've added forage and using fingerlings will give the bluegills a chance to multiply while the bass population is low.

I understand and have done something similar this past spring where I added 300 two to 3" RES into my pond where there are some large lmb and HSB. I have no clue if any of them survived but I have quite a bit of vegetation along the shoreline so my thinking was they would have a place to hide and grow larger. Like you, my thinking was maybe 10% might make it. It was not a lot of money so I thought what the heck. Sometimes we southern guys have trouble locating fish for stocking. There is a Yellow Perch that lives in Florida waters. I would like to get some of those and see if they might survive here in E. Texas. Problem is, no suppliers that I can find.

I also think that cover is very important. While my curly-leaf pondweed now seems under control from papershell crayfish, I think its presence earlier allowed just 12 2-3" LCS to grow and reproduce into a substantial population (based on the number washing out the tube during heavy rain events). These were added after YP were already reproducing young large enough to eat them.

Yes - I think an established pond with cover may offer more opportunities for fish to survive. I recently stocked 10lbs of FHM in hopes that some will survive and spawn (in addition to providing temporary forage).

Wish bluntnose minnows were more available as an alternative that has a better chance of survival.

Update: pond is doing well after one year of management. Have seen at least 3 different 4-6lb bass cruising shoreline at various times and the bass I'm catching are not as skinny as they were last spring. The bluegill are feeding well and looking fat. I've stocked about 25lbs of shiners so far this year and plan to add 50lbs more this week.

The crappie are a bit bigger this year but the bite has been hit and miss as temps keep fluctuating. I'm keeping all the ones I catch and hope that adding GS to the pond will help increase forage for all the predators.

Bass numbers are still on low side - think there had been a lot of caniblization by the bigger bass when forage was short. Also think the otters may have been hitting pond hard in previous years. Figure this year will focus on increasing forage and hopefully will add some F1 fingerlings in June to improve the genetics for larger size.

Good to hear of the improved conditions.

No question that big LMB eat their smaller relatives.

So far no luck obtaining F1 fingerlings.

That said I've seen a number of fingerlings that have survived the spawn this year. Interesting how much they vary in size.

Pond was a mess for most of June and first half of July as 2-4 D herbacide nuked most of vegatation and it slowly rotted and had matts of FA. Now a bit of watershield has recovered but pond is 95% open water. Threw in some bush piles along shallow end shore to provide extra cover for small forage.

Crappie numbers seem way down - have pulled out about 40 this year. Tried to get some the last couple days and only caught one 7" one

Bass fishing is slighly faster then last year - typically can catch 2-4 in an hour of fishing but until recently didn't take any good ones - removing the weeds seems to have changed up their pattern. In last couple weeks took a couple good 4lb+ bass fishing off structure I sank in about 6-8' of water (tho the bass seemed a bit higher in water column). Caught a 4lb 12oz bass today on my ultralight rod - was quite fun. Luckily have 10lb braid installed on it.