Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain skinny bass

I just found this site two days ago, and I love it.
My problem... Four acre lake, 95% of the bass only weigh between
3/4 to 1 lb. BG are mostly quite large, not many small ones.Lake is probably 25 years old.I suggested adding threadfin shad but was told that they would overpopulate the lake in three or four years and then we would have to poison the lake to get rid of them.Is this true? Any suggestions? Lake in W.Central part of Ga.

You don't have to worry about that with Threadfin Shad.

With Gizzard Shad it is possible. They get big enough were Bass cannot eat them. Those fish decrease the biomass available to Gizzard Shad that can be eaten by Bass.

Welcome to pondboss Deerstalker. Your pond sounds almost Identical to where mine was at about 6 months ago. My pond is 4.5 acres and had a overpopulation of bass that were 8-12". I had Greg Grimes come down and do a electroshock in june and he recomended taking out about 150 of the 8-12" bass and building the forage base back up. I added 1500 4-6" Bluegill and 4500 Threadfin shad. Threadfin shad can do wonders for your situation. They reproduce rapidly and seldom to larger that 6" So they never reach a size that is to large for bass to eat them. Mine come up every afternoon and school in the open water. I have removed 126 of the 150 bass that I was told to remove and im already starting to see improvement. You would be surprized how quick you can fish a pond back into balance. The best time to stock threadfins is in april or may right before they spawn that way the establish a population. I would have a elctroshock done in the fall or in the spring so you know exactly what is going on in the pond. Greg done a excellent job in the report and shocking. His website is http://www.Lakework.com if you want to take a look. It does sound like a classic case of bass overpopulation though. I would say go ahead and start removing some of those 8-12" bass and add some coppernose bluegill. You can learn alot from this site by just reading all the other questions that other members have ask.

Welcome Deerstalker, I am no pro but I agree with the others, and bet it would not hurt to start removing that 8-12" bass size.

welcome, like the name, I agree with comments. If you can an electrosurvey is money well spend. However also you can start by running some relative weights on your bass. http://www.lakework.com/articles.php
Bottom of this page will tell you how to do this. This will tell you if they are skinny for their size, thus removal is neccesary. Yes threadfin shad will be a big help for you, but only if yo plan to keep the pond fairly fertile. However harvest must be a part of this program and never a better tiem to start than the present.

jsas, if you got the bass out that easy I think you need to take more, tough call the first year on rec. #. You should see a major reduction in numbers caught if not keep pulling them out.

Greg, It wasn't easy to get that many out. The first 70 or so were fairly easy to catch. I have fished hard to catch the last 30. I was thinking of going ahead and removing a extra 15-20 so I would have some extra room to add a few F-1's and maybe a couple of hybrid stripped bass. Ill probably keep taking out 12" fish as long as im catching them though.

Needless to say that is all great advice. I have been removing stunted LMB from my pond for the last 2 years. I have removed roughly 150 LMB from my 2 acre pond. They were severly overpopulated (I guess that's what happens when no one fishes a pond for 5 years). The LMB are finally starting to come around. They have a RW of 86% which is up from about 70% when I first started.

I didn't have the money to stock GS or more BG so I just had to remove the stunted LMB and hope for the best. I was suprised at how much simply removing the stunted LMB helped with size. This year I also started feeding the CC and the BG.

Follow the above advice and you will reach your goals in no time.

Thanks for the input guys. I will take yor advise and put it to work right away.