Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations How to determine stunted fish?

I have a small cattle pond maybe 1/10 of an acre and right now i have very few bass (5-10) and alot of bluegill. I would like to see the BG get a little bigger but how do i determine if the BG are stunted and which ones to cull? Also the LMB are stunted I think. They have the typical large mouth and skinny body. Should i go ahead and cull these also? Like i said I am really interested in growing larger BG so which ones are stunted? thanks frank

w:

Weigh and measure the length of a sampling of the BG and the LMB. Determine the Relative Weight of your fish, which is their weight for a given length compared with the "standard" weight for an average, typical BG or LMB that size. For an article on RW and the tables for standard BG & LMB weights, see Greg Grimes' website lakework.com

If your RW for BG or LMB is low (if your fish weigh less than a standard fish of the same size) then your fish are indeed skinny.

How big are your 5-10 LMB? With only 1/10 acre, it's hard to support much bass biomass - 5 lbs total might be the pond's carrying capacity for LMB, and 10 skinny 12 inchers would exceed that. It is not common for both BG and LMB to be stunted in the same pond; usually either many stunted BG provide lots of food for a relatively low number of bass, or many stunted LMB crop BG numbers leaving plentiful food for the remaining BG. But I imagine that having both stunted does occur occasionally and perhaps that is the case in your small pond.

Do cattle have wade-in access to the pond? If so, are they muddying it up? This might reduce water clarity to the point of interfering with phytoplankton growth, leaving your pond's food chain short on vittles from the bottom up.

theo the bass are maybe 11 inches in length and when i say 5-10 lmb i may be stretching it. as far as the weight i am not sure. i need to invest in a digital scale. i have a cheap one from wally world but dont use it much. i think the bg are fairly young. we have not had cattle at our land four atleast five years. there seems to be plenty of vegetation and cover around the pond banks. thanks for your input

wb,

You may consider harvesting the LMB and going with some other preditor fish with the BG. Do you know what type of BG are in there and how big are they? Any Pictures would help too...

Gator

Good point, Gator. In a small pond setting, absolute control over predator numbers (like HSB, for example, would give) eliminates the worry of predator overcrowding.

I would be concerned that in a 1/10th acre pond in Texas the water temps. would get to hot for HSB assuming it is not real deep. No thermal refuge would be a big problem. If it did not die the stress would probably effect its feeding. In a bigger pond or with water inflow it would be different.

wb, A 1/10 acre pond is a very good candidate for raising just male bluegills. If you only put in male bgill they will not reproduce and they will grow large providing you do not stock too many. 40-60 would be about the right number for a 1/10 acre. See our 3 part article Growing Behemoth Bluegill in the Pond Boss magazine 2006 issues of March-April, May-June and July August(availble end of June).

Frank,

In a pond that size and with your desire to grow larger BG, I would seriously consider the Georgia Giant in concert with HSB as the predator. I can't comment on the relative merits/demerits of other HBG, but the experiment I have been running now for 6 months with the GG shows growth much higher than the standard growth for Texas BG. Most all of the GG's are already 8 inches following a Dec. stocking and the real growing season is ahead.

I don't know yet, if the HSB will survive the Texas summers in this small, very shallow pond (1/4 acre 6 feet deep). Also yet to be determined is how well the HSB will control the Fx offspring, but growth rate of the GG, as far as I'm concerned, is established as exceptional.