Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Help

boyscout, welcome to the forum. There's a lot of things to talk about for these ponds, and it's hard to figure out where to start.

Nutrient Loading:

Since they are water retainment ponds, I'm assuming that they collect excess water that has run off of some peoples lawns, and water from other places. If so, then the fertlizer that they put on their lawns is contributing to the high nutrient load and the weeds. The cattails in the one picture will completely encircle the pond in a number of years, making it impossible to fish from the bank. I'd work at removing a lot of those cattails, but that won't help the nutrient loading, in fact it'll make it worse. Decisions, decisions......

Before you start removing/adding fish, get a scale that will read in 10ths of a pound, and a good yardstick or ruler. On the pond that you want to manage for LMB, you need to start a log book. EVERY LMB that you catch, weigh and measure. Check in the archives here for the Relative weight chart for LMB. Check the fish against the chart. Do the same for the sunfish that you catch. The size of the sunfish will give us an idea what the LMB have to eat. What I'm saying next isn't written in stone, but this is what I'd do if it was my pond. If they are 110% or less than the listed weight for their length, then I'd start removing the lighter (skinnier) LMB. It might be that they have enough food to get to that size that you are catching, but not enough food to get bigger. Or, they could be that size because the pond winterkilled a few years ago. Ask the older guys if anybody remembers a winterkill on the pond.

If the LMB are over 110% WR, then I'd look into the BG population. What size are they? Again, catch and log sizes. LMB will eat fish up to 1/3 their body length, although slightly smaller fish will be preferred. The LMB don't chase really small fish once they get bigger, they like a larger meal for the energy that they expend catching it. Are the BG really BG or another sunfish species?

Fatheads will be a waste of $$ because of the fish that are already in the pond. It takes 10# of food to put one pound on one LMB. That 3# LMB had to eat at least 30# of food to get to be that big. When you multiply that by a lot of LMB in a pond, you can see that they can eat themselves out of house and home pretty quickly. So adding baitfish to a LMB heavy pond isn't a very wise choice if you want to grow large LMB, it's more cost effective to remove LMB.

I agree, let us know what the Maryland Fish & Game have to say about the population.

As for adding cover, go here find the water retention ponds and measure their size. You want to limit the amount of cover that you put in to around a maximum of 20% of the surface acreage. Too much cover will allow too many of the baitfish (i.e. bluegills) to hide, making them too hard to catch for the LMB.