HOA doesn't get involved with the neighborhood ponds. Talking to many of the neighbors I'm the only person they've seen using the pond in many years and gave me a
verbal go ahead to do what I wanted with it (as far as stocking and what not). I haven't seen anyone else in it in the 5 months I've been living there either.
I agree with what you said AaronM about there just not being a lot of fish in there. I wouldn't mind helping the bass out, and also developing a nice bluegill/bass fishery in my backyard. Like I said before I love saltwater fishing, and the bay is arguably one of the salt water fisheries in the world, but I do miss freshwater a lot and it would be great to have a place to get that fix that's right out my back door, and it would be a shame for a 4.5 acre pond to only have a few starving bass in it, but then again I don't have infinite funds to just throw at some fish.
One thing that I haven't talked about yet is the water quality. I have said that it is dark, extremely dark, anything over 2' deep and cant see the bottom at all. Plants are very thick in a lot of places too, and algae was very thick a couple weeks ago but has seemed to die down some now, though still quite a bit. The bottom in the shallows is pretty much decaying muck, leaves and all sorts of nastiness. Push an oar into the muck and foul smelling bubbles (sulfurous smell) comes up from the bottom. I have seen random parts where its sand bottom, but only very small (couple sq feet) sections are like that and are rare.
The pond overall isn't very deep either, I have put together a very rough bathygraphic chart based on my paddling around and checking to see roughly how far up my oar the water level is when its touching bottom.
As you can see the pond isn't very deep at all. The section where its 5+ plus (oar/my arm in water cant reach bottom) is only about 20' wide from shore to shore, very skinny/deep section of water in those fingers.
CJBS2003 - I'll try the bottom rig, I have tons of those for croaker fishing. Should I be doing this in the deeper sections or near the shallows? I have seen zero fish in this pond except for bass/bass fry. Fished nightcrawlers in the shallows and all around structure and got zero bites. Could the larger bass in the pond just completely depleted the forage population?
So if I wanted to repair this fishery, get my bass back to healthy size and a decent bream fishery what would be the course of action? Would the water issues that I talked about be a problem? I know bluegill bed on sand/gravel bottoms, would I need to clean out spaces in the muck and put down gravel or sand for them to bed on? Would I stock adult bluegill large enough for the bass to not eat so they can spawn? Do I catch all the bass out of the pond and start over? I of course would get written permission from all the other homeowners before starting anything, but from talking to them I doubt it would be a problem. Thanks for all the input guys.
