OK, so much more info. You have a young pond stocked at a rate of 100 LMB/acre. It sounds like your initial stockers have attained weights of ~3 lbs. But at this point it is unclear to me how many of your initial stockers you have culled.

If you are culling 14" and under fish and fishing them hard then only a few, hopefully, will make it through annually. So the worry will be the number of initial stockers still remaining. Obviously you have culled some them so I think you need make an educated guess how many are left. Then you can formulate a culling program that will continue to propel their growth and make room for new trophy recruits that escape your culling efforts. That's really all there is to it. You obviously have a fertile pond that has grown LMB to 3 lbs in just 2 seasons. You have the makings of a trophy pond but it will require that you do not try to grow too many of them.

You may be at a critical juncture with your pond. The carrying capacity is filled and you may have large quantity of 3 lb LMB. Think about how much you want them to grow (ie 1 lb/bass). Then think about what it takes to grow a 3lb bass to 4 lbs.

LBS Forage = 5 * 3 + 10 *1 = 15 lbs

Also think about your BOW how much LMB can it support use your good records to understand how productive it is.

How much forage would it take to grow the surviving stockers and how much forage would it take to grow the fish you harvested. Divide this by 2 (years) and 3(acres) and you have a pretty good sense of how much weight in forage your BOW produced per acre to grow the bass you harvested and that still remain in the BOW. That's the maximum you have to work without additional inputs.

Decide how many 3 lb bass can grow to the annual target weight on the quantity of forage your BOW can produce. Harvest until you think you've attained that number. To go from 3lbs to 4lbs you may need to harvest 33% of those initial stockers still remaining. It is important to recognize that LARGE LMB grow slower because it takes more to maintain them and their conversion of forage is not nearly so good as those that are 12". Because of that, I may have underestimated the percentage you need to cull. Even so, without knowing how many you have already harvested I couldn't venture a guess.

Chunting remarked about a management plan his old clubs used to implement. Harvest all BG caught ... Harvest all bass less than 3 lbs. They grew 10# plus LMB with that simple strategy. Not many LMB got through the 3 lb. gauntlet and the BG harvest reduced the standing weights of those BG that were relatively invulnerable to predation. The issue you may be dealing with is how many of the initial stockers made it 3 lbs? And so you will need to manage a harvest of this initial stocking for at least the next 3 or 4 years. Afterwards diligent harvest of the 14" and under will probably give you good results.

Last edited by jpsdad; 11/29/18 07:25 PM.
It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so - Will Rogers