This is such a difficult topic because I like to catch lots of bass maybe even if they are stunted over catching only one big one. Is that just crazy?
You bring up an interesting point James. Many Pond Meisters (myself included at least initially) set a goal of have a "Trophy Bass" pond. Yet I think many people (myself included) don't fully grasp the potential consequences of that decision. On several occasions it has been pointed out by many of the learned scholars of this forum that in order to have a true Trophy Bass pond you will by necessity have a relatively small number of large bass per acre of water. Ultimately you will be catching the same bass over and over and more likely than not that bass will become more hook shy and be more difficult to catch. So the pond meister has made a trade off of catching a large number of LMB per outing to the potential of catching a trophy bass occasionally. Quite a dilemma eh? A while back in one of the Pond Boss magazines there was an article about a gentleman that was primarily concerned with catch rates and not the size of the catch and this person stocked a large number of various species in his pond and intentionally let them be a little hungry. In this way he insured that guests to his pond would have the ability to catch any one of a multitude of different kinds of fish and catch quite a few of them. Over the past year or so I have decided that I am no longer interested in managing for trophy bass. I am more interested in catching a variety of fish. I already have LMB, GSF, BG, and RES in the pond and this year I'm gonna add Sacramento Perch. I have decided to follow the "Willie Nille" Philosophy of pond stocking. I don't know whether or not this will achieve what I want, time I'm sure will tell.
Oh and by the way your idea isn't necessarily crazy, on the other hand asking this group whether or not something pond related is crazy, well that's just crazy.
I'm sure the experts can address this topic (trophy bass pond versus catch rates or put another way - managing a pond for catch rates rather that large size fish) better than I or even refute my entire premise as I could have it completely wrong. What say you learned scholars and pond meisters extraordinaire?
