I manage a 1.25 acre pond in southern Missouri, max depth is around 10 ft. It has over 12 species of fish in some quantity but the only ones with sizable populations include largemouth bass, sunfish ( green, longear, hybrid, bluegill ), crappie, and channel catfish. Here is the problem, the bass are vastly overpopulated, so much so that this year so far out of 50+ fishing trips there I have only caught 3 largemouth ( and one spotted bass ) over a pound in weight. Over the past years we have culled a lot of bass out but there appears to not even be a dent in the population as you still see them up shallow and you can still catch tons of them. The sunfish population is low due in part to the original owner only stocking hybrid sunfish. I have added 80+ sunfish of all types in the 3-7 inch range but so far it does not appear to have made an impact. The other issue is the catfish, there are a few 20+ pound channel cats in there as well as some smaller ones. I think they are eating a lot of the bluegill and bigger bass. I am running jug lines to get them out but so far all I have caught is some 2-3 pounders. All catfish are kept and none are thrown back or added. What else should I so? The pic is the actual/relative weights from 2018, I have not sampled the relative weight yet this year.
