Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations how far south can smb live?

hey guys just woundering how far south a SMB can live? I live in Myrtle Beach South Carolina. Water can get into the high 80's. Right now i have FHM, BG, HBG,LMB, in a 2 and a half to 3 acre pond. Thanx for any help.

As you indicated, it's a mostly a matter of water temp. Are upper 80's the surface temps? SMB spend the summer in the deep. Lake Texhoma, (border of OK/TX) has a viable pop. of SMB. Yet, they do spend the hot months around sub-surface cliffs. If you have acceptable oxygen levels at the 12 ft + depths, your temps should be cool enough for these fiesty fish (not a true bass).

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthread...=true#Post16774

Ok, folks. I heard back from Dr. Jeff Slipke, who is with Southeastern Pond Management. He graciously gave me permission to post his smallmouth bass comments here on the forum.

"I do not manage any ponds that have SMB as the only predator in the pond. I have a few ponds that periodically add adult SMB as bonus fish in their LMB ponds. In these, the SMB do not recruit…no earth shattering news there. But the adults grow and thrive quite well.

However, I do have one 15-acre pond in southern West Virginia that is managed as a SMB fishery. It was stocked with bluegill and fathead minnows in Fall 2003, and golden shiners and crawfish in spring 2004. We added 350 adult SMB (8 to 14 inches) in July 2004. Things looked good until LMB got introduced by accident in Fall 2004 via a flooded creek.

Our electrofishing survey in July 2005 showed YOY recruitment of both SMB and LMB, with LMB fingerlings outnumbering the SMB fingerlings by 20 to 1 (WOW!), even though SMB adults outnumbered LMB adults by about 3 to 1. It’s sure tough for the SMB to compete. Anyway, we spent the better part of an entire day removing as many LMB as we could via electrofishing. We ended up pulling out about 40 LMB weighing a total of 29 pounds.

Our June 2006 electrofishing survey showed a 3:1 ratio of LMB:SMB fingerlings, so the LMB removal must have worked somewhat. We are scheduled to go up there in two weeks to remove LMB. We’re going early this year to remove LMB before they get a chance to spawn. I’ll keep you posted.

There are a couple reasons we don’t have more folks go with SMB as the predator species in this area:

-Fingerling SMB are not readily and reliably available.
-The fear of getting LMB introduced and messing the whole thing up.

I wish more of my customers would experiment with them, because I really believe they would do well. My gut feeling is that recruitment would not be a problem if we could keep those darn green fish out of the system."

I did a bunch of research on this last year before putting in SMB to my .1 ac pond in Phoenix (6' deep). We've had almost 30 days over 110 degrees this year, and my pond has been well into the 90's. I think you'd be hard pressed to say they can't deal with higher water temps. They're active, healthy, growing, and some of them trained themselves to eat pellets. And yes, they spawned this year and I've got a bunch of YOY SMB in my pond.

My pond is lined in rocks/gravel - and I'm sure that helped. So my suggestion if you want recruitment is to get rocks/gravel and dump in a large portion of the pond - they'll do their thing. (if you want to do more there is info on here about creating perfect beds for them, but in my pond they just found their preferred places.) My belief is that you'd have no issue whatsoever with temps. Just keep good water quality and aeration.

Everyone says that with LMB they won't recruit in the south - but if you're serious about this I'd recommend you try something that I haven't read about anyone doing - and that's creating a large portion of your pond for the SMB by adding LARGE amounts of gravel and rock. Most people put a few rocks on a dirt bottom pond - I'd suggest creating a gravel/rock bottom section of your pond for your SMB. If you've got a 2.5 acre pond, take 5-10% of it, order a bunch of rock/gravel from a landscape company, and dump it on the bottom of the pond. Sure you'd need quiet a few tons of rock, but my bet is that you'd have recruitment. Do a variety with pea gravel, 1-3", and rip rap bigger than 12".

The LMB in your ponds is a different story. They'll clearly outcompete them over the long-run if they're already in there. However, if you put in adults you should be fine with bit of diversification in your fishery. This will be pretty logical, but the more SMB you put in as a % the better you'll be. If you put in 20 fish you're not going to catch them very often. Just depends on how much you love them.

The other option, which is the one I use, is to constantly add 8-12 inch SMB and avoid the recruitment problem. Sure this costs some money but so does everything else we do with our ponds.

I like AaronM have had SMB thriving in pond water that reached 95F for several days in mid summer. Lots of rocks and gravel are beneficial but not absolutely necessary for successful spawning. SMB will spawn in pea sized or slightly larger gravel of a beach or shelf area. Nests are not real close together abt 20 ft so the nesting area should be expansive or a good number of nests (10-20 per ac) for them to be a little choosey.

I am not to worried about them not being able to compete for food. I fish the pond all the time and i keep alot of BG,HBG,FHM in there for all my LMB. So far the only problem i have had is the kids fishing and throat hooking them and yanking the hook out. I am trying my best to show them the proper way to dehook and throat hooked LMB. I have someone that can bring me 10 adult SMB and i was thinking of takein him up on the offer. And thank you everyone that has responded. If you come up with anything new keep it comein.

The 10 adult SMB should do okay in your pond. Keep us informed as to their survival and if they spawn for you. It would be beneficial to periodically check the surface water temps in the pond with the SMB, esp during the hottest summer weather in your area. Your temperature data and survivability of the SMB would be very informative to all of us here at Pond Boss.

No problem will do. Thats the lest i could do with all the help you guys are givein me. I have a ton of pictures to download of some BG , HBG , and a couple of monster lmb that i have caught. Should be able to do this by the end of the week. Thanx again for your help, everyone