Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations put, grow and take management

Yes Bob Lusk needs to provide some input here (obvious hint placed in a prominent location).

I think Norm assumes more information has been published than actually exists on this topic. His situation for a fishery is very unique. As far as I have seen in the literatue, harvest is a big or primarily or underlying goal of the research topics, few look at a fishery on just a purely Put and Release basis. "Everyone" esp public semi-public waters are mainly interested in how to manage the fishery to maintain a harvest rate of some type.

I think what Norm needs to be asking are, what are the expected life spans of the species that are in his pond (conditions) and how often do the fish need replentished or restocked based on expected life span. I think every answer he gets will be a big guess for this topic because there are numerous variables / unknowns in each pond situation that will affect the life span of each type of fish. Catch and release alone by novice fish handlers is a big unknown, plus length of time the fish is out of the water, amount of slime removal, ambient temps during capture, and amount of food supplies for a healthy recovery are all unknowns. I would think that tossing a fish back into the water from the height of a covered bridge (high dock) alone would be stressful considering a fish is essentially weightless its entire life and just removing it from the water and exposing the internal workings to full gravity is probably somewhat stressful in itself. I think the best Norm can expect from us, is an average or reasonable time frame or schedule for restocking of each species.

Ideally a routine shocking survey / or net samping would provide the best picture of what species are still present and at what relative numbers. Obviously these are just my opinions or 2 cents worth on this topic. I do now realize after numerous years in this business that most pondowners including myself, think they have way more fish in the pond than actually exists there. A recent pond draining, again, proved that to me. "We never see any dead ones", is what I frequently hear. "We put all those fish in there; what happened to them!"