I’m currently trying to manage a pond to increase large size bass and crappie. The belief is that the pond is currently very overpopulated. The pond is around 6-7 acres with many structures for fish to hide in deep open water as well as a flooded area of woods around 1 acre. We did a 7.5 hour 2 person management harvest using artificial bait and caught/kept 170 crappie 90% of which where 9-12 inches . We also caught roughly 55 bass keeping 39 between 11-14 inches. The owner of the pond has noticed a decline in trophy size fish being caught overall, while I was able to catch a 9 lb 2 oz bass last year( which in Ohio is a large bass) the frequency of bass over 5 pounds or crappie over 16 inches has drastically declined over the last few years. My question is how many crappie and bass should I be trying to remove yearly to restore a healthy balance to the pond. Thank you .
Attached below is a photo of the fish harvested from the pond. One more piece of information, these kind of harvest have been happening 2 times a year with basically the same number of crappie every time for 3 years now. This is the first year targeting a slot limit of bass.
