Pond Boss Forums FISH & FISHING Show off your catch one more and i'll shut up

had to show y'all this fish. it's one of my babies that i'm trying to grow. this one is just off the charts. 4lbs. 5oz. at only 17.5"! from all that i've learned here and elsewhere, a healthy 17.5" bass is "supposed to" weigh anywhere from 3 to 3.3 pounds or about 3lbs. 5oz. using that as a standard. this fish weighed a whopping pound more than what it was supposed to at a mere 17.5"! don't mean to brag and i hope this ain't taken that way. it's just that i'm pretty stoked about this. looks like my plan is working! the part that i'm happiest about is that these are regular old 2 pound kentucky lake "mutt bass" that i'm starting with. barely 15" keepers. no special strains or genetics. here's a couple of pics. the first is a view from the top. a little hard to see due to the reflection (sorry ) but still easy to see this bass' overall shape. look how small the head is. look how thick the fish is. the next is a shot from the side. girth on this fish is just freakish. o.k., i'm done now. thanks for bearing with me. just hard not to get excited when you are able to produce fish like this. a big thanks to y'all for everything i've learned here. i still have to figure out how to calculate that "relative weight" thing though. never was very good at math.

Sweet! Thanks for sharing.

So what is your secret to grow these out like this?

All I can say woo what a fatty. Nice job,

That is one healthy fish!

You don't have to shut up if you keep posting pictures like that. . Wow.

Nice LMB !

Don't shut up, keep up with the fish pictures and tips.

To calculate WR (relative weight) take the weight of your fish in pounds and tenths. Find what a fish that length is supposed to weigh. Divide your weight by the 100% WR of the fish in the chart. Your number is the WR in percentage. That fish has a WR of 130. (Boy, I hope I did that right!)

MRHELLO, if he told you what his secret was, then it wouldn't be a secret any more.

That's one of jignpig's pictures above.

What a hog!

Well I know that, but I figured we were all here to help each other out.

I am sure with the pond I have and my location I would have a hard time doing this anyway.

My guess is they have so much forage that they go to sleep with their mouths open and wake up with a full stomach.

That must be the same thing I am doing.

Jignpig has previously hinted to how he manages his pond. He seems to literally have a personal relationship with each bass in there. He is very astute as to which bass are showing good growth rates, which are not. Which are male, which are female. He keeps the numbers of bass in his pond at well below carrying capacity by removing all slow growers and keeping those who perform well. Which as has been mentioned, means there is so much food the bass literally have forage fish swimming into their mouths. This management style may seem simple on paper, but requires a lot of work and the right "feel". The pictures of Jignpig's insanely fat bass prove he knows what he is doing...

I believe Nate also posted a few pictures of insanely fat bass from a lake he manages where bass numbers were kept very low. Again, simple concept on paper, not so simple to pull off. The use off all female bass may make the process a bit easier...

thanks guys. as far as "secrets" go, i've really only held out on one big one - the particulars of my feeding program. i need y'all to understand something about that. it's not that i want to be selfish or stingy or secretive. far from it. anything i could say to help my fellow pond guys out on here, i gladly would and will. it's just that there is a very tedious balance to what i am doing. for all that i appear to have done right, there is one major problem. my fish die young. they grow like crazy for a while. they are jaw droppers with freakish proportions that a lot of folks would proudly hang on their walls. they reach lunker status at blazing speed - even some of the males. and i am able to continually keep multiple big fish in the pond at once, something that can be very hard under normal circumstances. but sadly, these lunkers usually seem to "burn out" and die prematurely. on top of that, they appear to be more "fragile" than regular old bass and i have to be careful when and how i handle them.

i believe this is due to the feeding program. i have been unable to obtain high quality food like aquamax. i have made do with what is available. as you can see from the pix, it works - big time. but like i said, success comes with a price - early mortality. to offset this, i keep a stacked population of fish in my program and recruit fish in as needed. that way when a big one does die, there are one or more behind it to take its place. i pretty much keep the same number of fish in the program at the same time - large, medium, and small sized. but it is not the same individual fish from year to year. inevitably fish die each year. fortunately my contingency plan of constantly recruiting new fish into the program acts as a continual buffer against the majority of the population crashing at once.

basically what that translates into is this. i could tell someone everyting i'm doing. if they chose to do it, they could have multiple big bass in their pond at once - 4's, 5's, and 6's easily. bigger in some cases. they would be some of the fattest, prettiest fish you ever saw. these bass would be super easy to catch for you and those you chose to educate about what you were doing. difficult if not almost impossible for anyone else to catch. but they would die. and they would die quicker than fish under ordinary circumstances. and if you weren't prepared for this inevitability, you and your pond would be set back a year or two.

that's why i don't just spill guts and tell what i'm feeding the fish. because done wrong, what i'm doing could actually set you back big time. and you can't take shortcuts. if you do, you will learn very quickly that mother nature does not like to be tinkered with and she can exact a heavy toll if you are unprepared for the challenges that arise. in other words, you can't just throw a bunch of _______________ in your pond for your fish to eat and call that good.

honestly, with what i am doing, initially GETTING a population big bass in your pond can be quick and easy. but continually KEEPING a population of big bass in your pond this way is anything but easy.

I think what you are seeing is a result of the fast growth, and is normal for those conditions. While it would be nice to have each fish around longer right now, with selective breeding, I'll bet you improve on the longevity in a few years.

I'm satisfied with the information that I have read on the forum on how you do it, and my hat is off to you. I don't think I could do it. Keep it up, I sure am interested in the results, and the road trip to get there!

I bet he hand feeds thems frogs and crayfish with the pinchers off.

I'm thinking Whoppers and French fries.

I guess the quote from Highlander is appropriate:

"....it's better to burn out than to fade away."

At any rate congrats, and keep the posts coming.

Thanks

So is the secret to catching your fish to use as bait whatever it is that you feed them? (You said it would be super easy to catch them if you knew how, but nearly impossible otherwise.)