Jeff what do you plan on removing each year to keep your pond from having a biomass crash?
I think the best answer that I have for this question is a little of everything but a lot of Bluegill. If I could teletransport myself back in time then I would not have added Bluegill. I would have added the RES and Sacramento Perch and therefore had a LMB, GSF, RES and Sacramento Perch pond. It's not that I dislike BG, they are fun to catch and very good eating, it's just that they are such a prolific breeder that I think I'm going to have to really concentrate on removing them in order to ensure any viable populations of the other species of sunfish. And by the way I have no idea if this is going to work or not. I do know that I would rather be able to catch a multitude of fish each outing. Fishing on our pond in 2008 was poor. We stocked our pond in spring of 2007 and then had a massive fish kill in summer/fall of 2007 (we had Elodea that had grown to about 70% coverage on our pond and my theory is that this ultimately caused an oxygen crash). The numbers of fish in our pond by late 2007 was significantly reduced. But in a way this was a good thing. In 2008 we embarked on an Elodea war and reduced to about 5% coverage, we allowed some american pond weed to claim some territory and now I believe have a reasonable amount of pond vegetation. We witnessed excellent recruitment of all of the fish species in 2008, we saw fry and young of the year in all species and I caught the largest LMB in 2008 that I have ever seen in our pond (four pounds and well fed, nothing trophy sized but it was fun none the less). I'm planning on adding Sacramento Perch this year (just because they are native to our area and grow to a decent size) and will continue on vegetation control. I just want to catch fish, they don't have to be huge and I'd like to be able to throw the line out and have the opportuninty to catch any one of a number of species. If that's crazy then I'm ready for the asylum.
