Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations one super thin bass

Fished Sat. at a pond just east of San Antonio that I help manage and we caught one bass that was just skin and bones. All the others were in good shape. This tank (pond) has always been overcrowded and is just a great tank to catch a lot of bass up to about 3 lbs.. Mostly 2 lb. and under. Although about three years ago the owners father-in law caught one about 8 lb. How it did that I will never know. Anyway , my question is , could this be just an old bass about to die? There were no visible signs of injury. I suppose I am trying to figure out what happens to old bass and how do they act when their time comes. I don't remember much discussion about this here or anywhere.

Thats a good question that I'd like to know a bit more about too. It reminds me of other fishing related behavior that I have a question on, let me explain.

We've seen posts here and heard how fish may remember not to bite a bait/food that they have been caught on before. An incident this week had me thinking on that a good bit. In my pond the bass are now a little over 1 year old. I began fishing for the bream this past week, it was finally time (woot). I hooked a little 5-6" coppernose bream, which was immediately hit by a bass, it was out a little ways and it put up a good fight, the bass that is. So I get it to shore and the only thing that has the bass hooked is of course the fins of the bream. I removed the bream from the bass, checked them both out. (Now normally I through out every bream I catch, but I felt this one deserved a second chance after such an ordeal )

Anyways I got to thinking after releasing this bass, will it ever eat another bream, or see one and have a flashback of this experience? It was a funny thought on one hand and then not so funny on the other.

i fished a lake called lake lydia.. A awesome bass lake..caught my personal best (5lbs) this was about a 1yr ago.. caught a good 5 or 6 fish and 2 of the fish were skin and bones.. i mean bad..belly looked like paper!..had the huge head... kinda odd lookin.. no meat.. like they could'nt develop muscle. i got to diggin in em and came accross what looked like gold earings in their bellies, almost like a tape worm.. and none of the other fish had em.. so i could'nt tell you. we reported to te lake mger, but never heard anything after that.. been back a few times and have'nt caught any that looked like that. so who knows!

chris

Thx for the reply guys, and I will check the stomach of the next one to see if I see worms or whatever. As far as them not biting on the same bait twice, I would say native bass (texas is all I can verify) will bite the same things over and over). I have another tank (pond) that has the florida strain and they are very hard to catch. I moved a few natives over to that tank and it has helped the bite. I don't know the reason why, but someone else posted that it helped them get their florida strain to bite so I tried it and it worked. Good luck folks.

I stocked about 50 LMB fingerlings in my 2/3 ac pond around May. I cought several of them this weekend in a cast net. They are now about 4" long, skin and bones. (two 1" LMB look healthy, but not fat). There are several reasons why they are skinny.

1. chocolate milk water,
2. competition from Black Crappie, (50 were stocked around the same time but grew to healthy 6")
3. conspicuously low #s of sub 1.5" minnows and fingerlings compared with couple of months ago.

The little LMB look like they are starving, and I have to figure out what to do about it. I am thinking that buying few lbs. of minnows may be the ticket. Once they get little bigger, they can eat the dozens of baby frogs on the shores and the 1.5 - 2" and bigger Bluegill. The pond has been couple of feet below normal for up to three monghs now, and all the shallow areas are dry. Maybe the smaller fingerlings got wiped out when the fish got concentrated in the deeper parts, or the cold spell at the beginning of October stopped the Tilapia and Bluegill reproduction. There is nothing I can do about the water clarity, because my pond is overrun by Bullhead catfish. My primary reason for having LMB, is to put a dint in the Bullhead, Crappie and Bluegill fry. Any other ideas on how I can help these guys?