My friend has a 1 1/2 acre pond in Central CA that is the normal over populated and stunted LMB situation. We have been removing every LMB that we catch for about a year now. We are seeing a very small improvement on the weight of the bass but still have days where we catch fish on every other cast. The pond is about a hout from home so we only fish it about 10 times a year. On 3/8/2008 we planted 20 adult BG that I am pretty sure were too large for the LMB to eat and 25 channels cats (7.5-10.5"). The LMB we catch are skinny 7-13". There hasn't been any other species of fish seen or caught in the lake in the last few years, including the BG & CC.

There is another 1 acre pond on the property that has no bass in it and we planted a small amount of RES & BG in last spring along with 25 CC. I also have my pond but I do not want to remove my relatively few BG that are large enough to avoid predation from the LMB.

A group of us want to head to the pond and have a fish fry sometime soon. We are also getting pretty close to the LMB spawn. Do you guys think we should try to remove a bunch of fish before the spawn or wait until the spawn occurs? Create forage or prevent as many new mouths as possible? Obviously we need to add more adult BG but I don't think we put enough in the other pond to be removing any yet. I will let my fish supplier know that I am in need of adult BG next time they come across some.

What do you guys think?