BrandonA I strongly suggest you contact Dr. Jeff Slipke with Southeastern Pond as he and the others at SEP have experience with southern SMB ponds. As a general rule the smaller the pond the quicker it gets out of balance and the easier and less expensive it is to fix. On bigger ponds (10 acres + ) it pays to do it right the first time and they tend to keep their same condition because they are more like a train - they keep going are harder to stop and change course and cost a lot to correct. I have no hesitation trying things on a small pond that I would not try on a big one because I know it will be easy to fix. A 100 acre lake magnifies those concerns. Take a look at this thread.

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=16774&fpart=1


by Dave Willis ,
Ok, folks. I heard back from Dr. Jeff Slipke, who is with Southeastern Pond Management. He graciously gave me permission to post his smallmouth bass comments here on the forum.

"I do not manage any ponds that have SMB as the only predator in the pond. I have a few ponds that periodically add adult SMB as bonus fish in their LMB ponds. In these, the SMB do not recruit…no earth shattering news there. But the adults grow and thrive quite well.

However, I do have one 15-acre pond in southern West Virginia that is managed as a SMB fishery. It was stocked with bluegill and fathead minnows in Fall 2003, and golden shiners and crawfish in spring 2004. We added 350 adult SMB (8 to 14 inches) in July 2004. Things looked good until LMB got introduced by accident in Fall 2004 via a flooded creek.

Our electrofishing survey in July 2005 showed YOY recruitment of both SMB and LMB, with LMB fingerlings outnumbering the SMB fingerlings by 20 to 1 (WOW!), even though SMB adults outnumbered LMB adults by about 3 to 1. It’s sure tough for the SMB to compete. Anyway, we spent the better part of an entire day removing as many LMB as we could via electrofishing. We ended up pulling out about 40 LMB weighing a total of 29 pounds.

Our June 2006 electrofishing survey showed a 3:1 ratio of LMB:SMB fingerlings, so the LMB removal must have worked somewhat. We are scheduled to go up there in two weeks to remove LMB. We’re going early this year to remove LMB before they get a chance to spawn. I’ll keep you posted.

There are a couple reasons we don’t have more folks go with SMB as the predator species in this area:

-Fingerling SMB are not readily and reliably available.
-The fear of getting LMB introduced and messing the whole thing up.

I wish more of my customers would experiment with them, because I really believe they would do well. My gut feeling is that recruitment would not be a problem if we could keep those darn green fish out of the system."