Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations First Tagging weekend! Weigh or no weigh?

I purchased the Tagging Gun from Greg at lakework.com and put it to use this past weekend. Thanks to those who gave me tips on how to use it. I felt there was a learning curve to it, but I got better as the weekend went on. I felt some of my tags were not properly placed, but they seemed to stay in, while I felt others were perfectly placed. Is there an additional tip regarding where you aim the needle?

Fishing was slow this past weekend in both of my main bass ponds. I did move some nice bass from one of my small ponds to the main ones along with about 75 BG/RES.

I even caught a tagged fish 24hrs after tagging!

I am in a debate with my fellow pond boss on what data to keep on the tagged fish. I think at this point I am in favor of NOT keeping track of weight due to the stress of weighing and it seems easier to just note length of bass and if they are healthy or skinny. Do other PB's agree with this? Another negative to weighing is that the scales would have to be 100% accurate 100% of the time.

My ponds are a work in progress, but at least now with some tagged fish I can keep track of a little of the goings on. The only negatives to my main pond is that it has crappie in it and no visible minnows/shad. I have put a lot of BG/RES in there and I know the population is pretty good, but I worry about shad count. I also think that I have taken out too many 14inch bass in the last 2 years. I think next year my cull length might drop to 13in and below

Take a look at this PB thread Tagging 101 if you have not seen it. Note the pics and comments from Dave Willis.

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=24354&fpart=1

I would weigh at least a sample of about 10% at least so you can check WR (RW) relative weights.

http://www.lakework.com/photo_gallery/gallery2/v/random/
thiss page shows a few tags so that might help. I agree with EW I like weights b/c it will help you track Wr and show if a certain size class is below par for the course, thanks again for purchase.

So far my tags seem to be staying in. How do I know? Because I am already catching the same fish. I put 6 bass from a small pond that were all very healthy into my main fishing pond and have been shocked to catch 3 of them a few weekends later in about 15min. Sadly, it is looking like a lot of bass ran out of my ponds during the spring floods. I only caught 6 this past weekend, but like I said, 3 were from the other pond. The pond is about 2.5 acres so the odds seemed small.

One of the bass from the little pond was 3.75lb and very healthy. When I caught him again the other day he looked like he had lost some weight.

The link had some great pictures, thanks for posting.