Hi all! I just found this site and it is EXACTLY what I've been looking for! I just printed out about two inches worth of paper to read from here. Here's my story:
About a year ago a friend bought some land with a 3 and 1/2 acre pond on it (it seems slightly smaller in size to my eye, but that's what he says it is). It's a good size pond, anyway, and ranges from 6 to 10 feet deep in the middle...of course shallower by the banks. The previous owner said it's about twenty years old. My buddy doesn't fish much and so he put me in charge of managing it. I've read all I could and went to work on it last year. Here's my game plan and questions.
My initial evaluation of the pond via fishing over several months showed there to be many large bluegill (almost no small ones) and many small skinny bass less than 12". I also caught a few perch and black and white crappie (all good size). There were no crayfish under rocks by the banks, and no visible minnow life. So, the only obvious problem was bass overpopulation and a lacking forage base.
The pound lacked structure, with perhaps only six or seven boxes built from 2x4s and some bolders sunk here and there. I figured it needed some brushy structure to hide the smaller fish and minnows. So far I've sank seven or eight christmas trees and five or six bundles of brush in water ranging from 2 to 7 feet. I've also sank a few stumps and some cinder blocks in piles. How many brush piles consisting of how many christmas trees do you guys suggest per acre?
My next step was to remove some of the bass. I read that 25 pounds per acre should come out. So, I figured 2 fish under 12" per pound X 25 = 50 fish per acre x 3.5 acres = 150 fish. So far I've removed about 108 bass.
This pond recieves some crop field runoff during heavy rains and thus the weeds were a little above average. We put in 20 grass carp to control them. It also experienced an above average fish kill in the spring. To help prevent spring fish kills and help control the weed problem we installed a windmill aeration system.
The next step was to build up the forage base. We added 100 more bluegill and 3200 fathead minnows. We also plan to dump another 3200 fatheads in this spring. What other forage fish would you suggest stocking and can I expect any of the fathead population to survive?
Other fish we stocked last year include: 90 black crappie, 250 yellow perch, 180 shellcrackers, 350 channel cats.
I was also told that the previous owner only had put in largemouth, smallmouth (never caught one), perch, crappie, bluegill, and a few channel cats. All of which are fine, and luckily no bullheads, carp,green sunfish, or other "bad" fish were stocked.
However, he did mention that he put in 3 blue cats and one 12 pound (at the time) flathead about five years ago. I saw one of these cats last spring surface and it was HUGE! I've heard mixed opinion on bluecats being safe for a pond but I know for sure the flathead needs to come out. I'd also prefer to remove the three blues to be safe. Any ideas beyond using a live bluegill and fishing all night?
Any tips or advice you guys could give me would be great. Thanks again.
