Dave,
When we bought this lake in 2003 it had a bunch of green sunfish, a small number of skinny 2 lb largemouth bass, and every third or fourth fishing trip you could catch a big 8-9" bluegill. Very little aquatic vegetation, no cover, zero runoff as the lakes sits on top of a huge hill, and visibility down about 20'.
At first we started dumping in things like lime, fertilizer, windmill aerators, all kinds of fish, all kinds of aquatic vegetation, trees, catfish food, etc. (thats when I got started helping other people with their ponds and lakes cause I knew where to buy all that crap) Absolutely anything and everything that had to do with pond and lake management we were dumping in and trying. After a couple years of growing some monster catfish and some marginal success with some big smallmouth bass, along with lots of scams with the likes of the georgia giant people, arkansas free fish guy, "hybrid" crappie, broken windmills, feeders that didn't work, etc etc, I stumbled upon the Pond Boss website, spent a couple years stalking Bob Lusk and the rest is history.
Here is the kicker to this lake, swimming is actually the main activity of the lake so everything I do with fish these days has to maintain at least 10' of clean clear water or momma aint happy. Also growing trophy fish is not the focus either. Large numbers of multiple species is the focus. Most people that fish are very inexperienced anglers catching a fish for their first time, or catching a new species they would never encounter in their lifetime elsewhere.
Most of the good fish in the lake are stocked fish. It is still very hard to grow a fish from start to finish in here. We have lots of natural reproduction of many species, but those fish just dont have what it takes to grow into good adults in this environment (blessing and a cursing) To overcome that we have our own hatchery, cages, etc to grow em up to size and stock them large enough to get over the hump and turn into adult fish.
This info is just a drop in the bucket to what goes on in this lake, but its the proving grounds for observing and manipulating fish populations.
