I caught and released two that were 14#-15# (there should be 4 like that in the pond and when I released them I tagged them with a numbered floy tag). The same year that I stocked the 100 CC (Spring)at 6"-9" I C&R 4 or 5 of them earlier in the year. Towards the end of 2009 (after I found PB) I decided that I wanted to stock HSB, but was concerned about the biomass of fish in the pond, so I decided to catch out all the CC (which were a PITA to catch) and replace that biomass with HSB.
This year I tried to hit the CC hard, but didn't go to the extent of buying a fyke net. I had an 80 hook trotline in the pond most of the year, had people over to fish strictly for CC at night, etc. I ended up removing about 25 CC, which still leaves about 80 CC in the pond. This pond varies in surface area from 1 to 1 3/4 ac depending on the water table height.
I feed and aerate, the CC went from 6"-9" in the Spring of 2009 to 13" to 6# (didn't measure it) this year. I fin clipped all the stocked CC in 2009, so I can tell if there is any reproduction in the pond. If I hadn't fin clipped them, I would have thought the 13" one was a spawned fish. I guess that one just didn't have the "grow" gene in it.
I pulled the trot line today, and took off one last CC. It's 19.5" long and weighs 4.3#. I hadn't re-baited the trot line in a week nor checked it after going almost 3 weeks without a bite.
I used Hotdogs, beef liver, shrimp, dip baits, cut up BG and GSH, crayfish and nightcrawlers. Hotdogs caught the most fish this year, followed by beef liver and shrimp.
The plan is to catch all the CC out except the 4 biggest ones -those are easy to determine, they should be around 30" and 15# now.
