Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations LM Bass Question

We dug my pond a yer ago and it is al little over 1 acre when it's full. Right now due to weather and a little rock (and I mean little rock) it's a little over half full but coming up everytime it rains and holding water again.

This summer I put in about 300 BG from 2 to 6 inches 50 CC that were 8-10 inches and 50 LM Bass that were 10-18 inches from a neighbors pond. My question is I can see BG and CC feeding on top when I feed them but for the life of me I cant catch the first bass. I fish bass tourny alot I I don't think it's my skills, or maybe it is ,I am thinking someone has poached them? I would like to think I could at least catch one every now and then but I can't catch the first one. Is this normal for a first year pond or do I have a poacher?

Thanks for any help in advance.

Donnie

Donnie, how big is your pond? 50 LMB in a 1 acre pond is very different than 50 LMB in a 10 acre pond.

Frequently when fish are in relatively low densities and there is plenty of forage for all they can be very difficult for anglers to catch.

Donnie,

Your skills aren't the problem. It is very possible that the 10 to 18 inch fish were pre-conditioned by fishing pressure to avoid artificials. Presumably they were caught at least once when transplanted to your pond. In my experience, when raising LMB from the fingerling size, "catchability" on artificials falls off dramatically with age and exposure to artificials. As your LMB reproduce, you should catch the youngsters, but as they age they also will likely become conditioned, whether you practice catch and release or not.

I haven't found any definitive answer to this problem, other than carefully managing fishing pressure. If you do have poachers, even well meaning catch and release poachers, they can greatly compound the management problem.

To test my conditioning theory, try fishing with a small live BG...I'm betting you will get lots of LMB action. If not, then they probably have been removed.

Shorty the pond right now is about 3/4 of an acre.

Meadowlark I think you may be on to something. I cought most of the fish, around 35 to 40 from a neighbors pond. When I cought those they were hitting every cast and we had 25 in a about 1/2 hour. After we pu them in my pond we could catch about 8 or 9 a day untill now, nothing. It really hasn't had alot a pressure the past few months, maybe a day every other week for a few minutes.

I fed some dog food to the fish earlier today to see what hit it and all I saw was BG and the CC. Do LMB eat dog food? Or do you think they mainly eat the BG? Thanks all for the the adivse.

Donnie

LMB don"t usually take pelleted feed, especially if they have anything close to sufficient live prey.

DJ - welcome to our fish raising forum. Since you are an angler of bass tournaments and an experienced angler, now you will get an education on how bass behave in a small pond. I don't think your angling skills are the problem; at least so far.

It sounds like after you initially caught these bass for stocking into your pond, you also fished for them numerous times, and now you can only catch the occassional bass. This is your first lesson in LMbass behavior; they learn quick (Lusk calls this conditioning). Either way the results are the same; hook smart fish. If you want the initial group of stocked bass to be very catchable, don't do what you did. As Theo mentioned, your first year class of bass from your initial stocked fish will be quite vulnerable to angling.

Those initial 50 LMB have been exposed to negative reinforcement of angling several times THIS summer. They do not like results of angling and frequent angling gets them conditioned to be more cautious. The amount of conditioning required to teach them to avoid lures varies among individual fish; natural variability dictates that some are smarter than others. Smartest ones learn from watching others get removed. Some bite once some twice. Dumbest ones will repetitively bite; Others are in-between.

If you put a treble hook in a big chunk of hot dog and then hooked and drug your dog around by the lips how fast do you think he would stop eating your offerings of hot dogs? I and others have learned that fish are not a whole lot different than the hooked dog example. You are now also in the early stages of learning this lesson. For more information on this topic read two back issues of Pond Boss Magazine: Lusk's & Mann's good article on Smart Bass Mar-Apr 2005, and Willis' and Cody's article on LMB angling to monitor LMB and how angling affects their catchability. Both are very good articles for someone in your situation about fish learning and catchability - read them.

Your bass will need a rest from fishing pressure before some of them resume bitting lures/baits. Always using new styles of baits helps catch success rates. Although eventually the bass will learn to look for a line or some hardware attached to "food" or humans with "sticks"; both strong negative reinforcements to them. Since fish can see you before you see them due to how light bends as it enters the water fish quickly know when someone approaches their enviornment. This character helps them avoid land based predators including anglers.

There has been discussion here previously about fish food quality and using other foods such as dog food to feed your fish. A search in past posts will reveal those discussions.

Look at the protein content of your dog food and make a mental note of it. Average fish food for omnivours (BG, Catfish, Tilapia) contains 32% protein; some as low as 28%. Very rarely will bass eat this 28%-32% food unless they are very hungry. Lower protein foods have very litle if any fish meal or flavor enhancers in it. Only if very lucky, you will you usually get a couple to several bass to eat this 32% protein food. Carnivore fish need fish food with proten content 40% or greater. If pellet bass are raised on high protein food, very few of them will adapt to eating lower protein foods. Most will go off pelleted food if natural foods are common in their pond. Most fish hatcheries that are raising bass on pelleted food for production use 45%-50% protein pellets. Getting non-pellet raised older bass (10"+) to eat fish food is a real challenge where many fail to succeed. I am not surprised your bass ignore dog food. They will eat hot dogs and raw meat quicker than dog food.

Well I finally caught a couple fish this afternoon. First one was "Big Momma" the largest in the pond weighing about 5 lbs. Second one was slightly smaller at about 3.5 pounds. What I did different this time was I fished at a differnt time than I normally do. Usually i fish right before dark, this time I fished while the sun was up and bright. Also I used a floating worm. I don't believe I have caught anything on the floating worm in the past, but it did the trick today. With fall approaching I figure it wont be long before they start feeding up for winter, so they should get a little easier to catch.

On a side note my BG had a pretty good spawn. I can see lots of baby BG on the shore. Hopefully some will make it through the winter and the heavy feeding by the LMB in the upcoming weeks.

Thanks guys for all your help. I am learning more about fish every day, this site is full info.

Theo and Bill I am gonna be working in Batavia Friday you guys near there? I travel alot so I may pass a few of you every now and then.

Donnie

I'm probably 1 hr 30 or 45 min from Batavia ("Eggs are cheaper in the country and so are Chevys"); Bill is up North of me a ways.

Donnie,

They eat just about anything alive that they can get in their mouths...either above or below water. Sometimes even try to eat live things which don't fit in their large mouths and die as a result.

They love BG. From your description of the pond, trap a small BG or two, put it on a circle hook and see what happens. I think I can predict the results.