I have a small pond (0.4 ac). It was stocked with 400 coppernose bluegill in Dec 2000.
40 largemouth bass were stocked in June 2001. The fish have been fed floating
fish food daily and the pond is fertilized when needed.
Up until about April of last year I was catching (and releasing) hand
sized bluegill fairly regularly. About that time I stopped catching
large bluegill and begin catching small bream almost exclusively. I
continued the feeding and fertilizing program and was planning on
starting to harvest the bluegill this spring. During the past couple
months, I began keeping records of my catches. I have been keeping all bluegill
that I consider "too small to clean" and throwing back all
"nice-sized" bluegill. I have caught about 220 bluegill of which about
200 were small (and kept) and less than 20 were large enough to throw back.
My question is this. Does this sound "normal" for a 2.5 year old pond?
I was expecting to catch many more large bluegill and the sudden
change in bluegill size I experienced in April 2002 has me wondering what
has happened. I haven't experienced any fish kills and I have
not removed any of the bass so I know they are doing all they can to
keep the young bluegill in check.
Any ideas?
