Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking What to do?

Ben good work on the setting boundaries...it's not easy to do, I thought your previous posts suggested someone was bucket stocking, and wanted to encourage you to put your foot down.

Your forage establishment efforts weren't necessarily a waste - you should run a seine and see what you can sample before you lose heart.

Not to be a downer, but you have BG, and you will likely not eliminate them without a seine/drain/nuke session. They are there to stay. So you should be shifting your fishery management strategy to BG and LMB population management if you aren't starting over. That's my primary point - a single female BG can drop 80,000 eggs in a season. You can do the math - you'll never get ahead of them, but you might be able to manage them like I have done, Shawn Banks, Dr. Dave and others with BG/SMB fisheries. Shift your focus to long term management of LMB and BG now is my suggestion.

Mark Cornwall wrote the article on the SMB dominated fishery, sometime in the last year. He suspected the unique dynamic of the SMB dominated fishery was due to perfect timing on lake drawdown when LMB were on their beds [sometime in late May in NY]. It's simple: When water temps are rising to the appropriate temps and LMB are starting to nest, drop your water levels to disturb the nesting LMB. That could be 3 - 5', you'll need to determine the level. This should help you either expose LMB nests/eggs and prevent recruitment, or drive LMB from their nest sites and prevent a spawn altogether. Just a thought, it's something I would definitely do in your situation. With appropriate angling pressure on BG and LMB, you could still manage the pond for the species you originally planned for. I am proof positive one can manage a cool water species fishery with existence of BG and BH. Just takes some attention and hard work.