I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but a strictly catch and release gamefish pond that has a spawning population of LMB will turn into a LMB stunted pond. They WILL eat themselves out of house and home, it's just a matter of time. Once they do that, it will be an expensive and time consuming fight to return a fishery that size back into balance.

By keeping track of relative weights and by keeping track of the forage fish you can keep the LMB in the pond from stunting, but you have to remove LMB..

I realize that my pond is smaller than yours. I have 37 tagged LMB in the pond and the rule is that ANY LMB that is not tagged gets removed, no matter how small or large it is.

Here's one from earlier this Fall that was not tagged and subsequently removed:




So you see that catch and keep isn't so bad after all! IIRC it weighed 4.2#. Notice the small head and small tail for the body size. That means that it's growing fast.

A single LMB needs 10# of fish to eat to gain ONE pound.

It's been said that a pond can comfortably carry around 50# of LMB per surface acre. BUT, a pond that is not aerated and doesn't have supplemental feeding can only carry around 300# of fish per surface acre. If there are 50 1# LMB/acre in that pond, then it would have to produce 500# of forage fish for those LMB to get to 2#. Remove some of the LMB and they will grow quicker.

Now would you rather have 50 1# LMB, 25 2# LMB or?

That's simplifying it, but you get the picture why strictly C&R is not a good idea.


www.hoosierpondpros.com


http://www.pondboss.com/subscribe.asp?c=4
3/4 to 1 1/4 ac pond LMB, SMB, PS, BG, RES, CC, YP, Bardello BG, (RBT & Blue Tilapia - seasonal).