Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations managing fish populations

You have not really given me enough information about water fertility, water clarity and management practices to give you a real good
estimate.

First a little background and ground work as a basis for your question.

Generalities are:
As we have mentioned here numerous times previously, fish biomass / numbers in a pond are directly related to the pond�s fertility. Pond fertility is often measured by how much phytoplankton & zooplankton is in a known volume of water. Typically clear water has less plankton and cloudier � greener water has lots of plankton. Fertilizer i.e. nutrients make the plankton become more dense or abundant. Waters with higher plankton amounts produce more fish biomass / numbers.

In balanced systems, panfish and small fish are always more numerous in a pond than number of predators because each predator needs to eat quite a few panfish each year to survive. If the predator is to be pump and get bigger,,, then the number of panfish eaten each year needs to be more than the amount for just a survival diet.

Also just because one stocks 100 bass per acre, it definately does not mean that 100 bass per acre will survive to be big fish (16"+). Nature does not work that way and will not allow that to happen with the natural food sources available.

Some past data:
A study was done in the mid 1970�s in 8 central US states by a group of fishery biologists. The group sampled all fish in 38 �average� ponds (0.5 � 4.1 ac).

Total weight of bass in the ponds ranged from 3 to 100 lb per acre; average was 36 � 41 lbs / ac (2 yrs) . Biologists like to talk about the amount of fishes present as pounds per acre because sizes of fish present can be real variable from year to year but the total group weight tends to be similar from year to year.

Total numbers of bass larger than 8� per acre ranged from 2 to 106. Numbers of bass larger than 16� on a per acre basis ranged from 1 to 16 per acre.

Estimates for you:
SO based on this information, I guess that your pond, if it is in the best condition, and has been managed properly, it has at best 15 to 17 bass larger than 16� per acre or a total of around 90 larger sized bass (16"+) in the whole pond (5.3ac) 17x5.3=90.1. Total number of bass 8" or longer would be signficantly higher based on info above (up to 500). Many ponds have bass densiers a lot less than these estimates.

You did not ask for estimates of numbers of catchable bass. I assumed (maybe incorrectly)you meant the category of fairly large bass.

Newer ponds such as yours with its original stock of bass could in best conditions have a few more larger sized bass in it than 90,, maybe 100 to 140 per 5 acres. But as these originally stocked fish are harvestd or die from old age and the system develops a more realistic steady state the numbers of large replacement bass per acre typically tend to decrease from optimum "new pond condition" densities. This is due numerous things but primarily to improper fish management in terms of usually the variablity of fertilities, loss of plankton biomass, and improper distribution of sizes of the forage fish and predators.