Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Nebraska old sand pit

Need some help! Behind my house is a sand pit that is probably 30yrs old or so and is about 11 acres. Typical bass, gills, crappie, catfish, carp sand pit. My issue is the bass and crappie just look starved which they are. Our only source of baitfish seem to be fry of gills, crappie, etc. minnows are not present from what i can see. After talking to the fish hatchery guy last fall he said it would take a grand to put a large amount of fatheads in but he said it wouldnt take long for the over population of bass to gobble em up. So, what options does a guy have to add some sources of food at a somewhat reasonable price? We did add 400 6-8in perch last fall hoping they may help add some baitfish since they generally tend to be prolific spawners. Any help would be appreciated. Prior to last year there was little structure as far as trees but we have since added some large cedar tree piles.

I'm having somewhat the same problem... I'm removing as many bass , catfish, crappie as I can and feed the BG and hope they can catch up in a year or so..... to many hogs at the trough

I caught and cleaned 10 bass today. Only 1 female and none of them had any
Noticeable food in them. We are coming out of winter months but this surely isnt common?

Probably just an abundance of predator fish and a lack of bait fish, but this problem needs decisive action to turn it around.

Super aggressive culling is most likely the first and most major activity.

Unless you go way extreme with the addition of some 'sustainable' size of bait fish, it will not change the dynamic.

Electroshocking might one of the better ways to cull fish, as well as trapping and seining.

11 acres might be too large to kill everything off and start fresh.

jw - your situation of too few forage fish is a common problem. Adding more forage is the same as having a bunch of, or actually, too many wolves in an enclosure or on an island. To fix it you want to add more sheep and deer to feed them. This makes the wolves healthier so they produce more wolves.

I have read here on the forum that adding some cover in shallow water for protection of your forage fish will allow higher survival rates and also what does survive will give hiding places so they can reach a reasonable size to provide a better meal for your predators.

So if you lack cover for your BG YOY fish, you might consider adding some shallow cover like cedar trees along the shore line. The BG are prolific reproducers but if their fry are getting nearly all of them eaten before they reach an inch long they are providing very little forage. Need to give them hiding places so they can reach at least a few inches in length.

I currently have the opposite problem. My BG have reproduced wonderfully, but my LMB population has lagged. I did put in a lot of structure when I built the pond.

Bill are you sure your statement came out the way you wanted it to?

I figured the corrective method would be to reduce the wolf population so the sheep and deer could get established for a more balanced food source.

Or maybe I just read and took your statement incorrectly?