Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Worried my cc are spawning in my pond?

Obviously. Have removed over 680 since last october and still removing. The large one is over 7 pounds and caught about 12 of the little ones this morning. I thought lmb would remove many of the small ones?

Doc, how big is your water? I have lots of CC spawnng structure and have had a few survive, but I've never seen any sign the population was growing much, if at all over what gets removed.

All the fish look healthy, but a considerably under optimum WR to me from the angles I see.

4.35 acres according to google maps. removed another 16 small ones this evening...

Sounds like you got CC spawning and the YOY surviving... What is your LMB population like? The larger the pond is, the more likelihood of CC reproduction surviving. Particularly if you have a lot of woody debris and vegetation.

I agree your channel cat are spawning and surviving. I try to take out catfish every week but still feel like that the catfish are increasing in numbers. At least the catfish are good to eat when the water is cool. They seem to taste more fishy when the water is warm and they have been eating the moss in the pond. If you come up with a way to remove large numbers of them let me know.

lmb population is good but i did add some feed trained lmb this spring in the 1-2 pound range.

Doc, it sounds like you are well on your way to controlling your CC population. It also sounds like the CC population is simply so large that the spawn simply overwhelms the predators with the sheer numbers being produced.

Have you considered getting Greg Grimes or someone else near you to do a shock survey and remove all the stunned CC?

Having removed nearly 700 in a year must have put a dent in the breeding stock if the majority of those removed are mature fish. Consider having a few weekends of friends/family/church youth groups/Boy Scouts targeting CC and remove all that are caught. A couple Boy Scout troops or youth groups might love the opportunity to camp out for a weekend and do some night fishing!

What are the sizes and numbers of other species like BG and LMB you are catching?

rainman
greg's guys matt and josh shocked my pond this spring with few cc harvested. They said that cc don't shock well. I have lmb from 6 plus pounds to less than a pound. I have bg up to pound. I have noticed that my yoy bg population is much higher than I have ever seen them. I am seeing tilapia fry in the shallows by the thousands.

Dang Doc! I don't know what to say. Your pond seems to be exceedingly productive. Unless you are missing a size or year class of predators or prey, it seems like you have what we all strive for, a fish producing machine. Now you are faced with finding time to fish...

The tilapia will obviously move otherwise unusable nutrients into the food chain to be provide a higher carrying capacity and I assume with feed trained LMB you are feeding. You may simply be a victim of your own management success!

I'd love to hear what our plethora of outstanding lake managers like Greg, Nate and the PondBoss himself along with the many others here think.

rainman
with the extreme levels of cc I had, the yoy recruitment was extremely low. We had very few lmb of any sizes except the originals we put in 7 years ago. Also bg numbers were low. After 3000 cnbg from greg grimes and removing the high numbers of cc, seeing fry everywhere is encouraging.