Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Help What happened to my fish?

I just found this site and thought someone might be able to help me with my problem. We have several small farm ponds and the newest one is ab 5-6 acres. When I say new I mean ab 15 yrs old. We were instructed to put the bluegill in first which we did and waited until the next year before we introduced the largmouth bass. After a couple of years we were catching really nice bass and not long afterwards we were regularly catching 5-7 pound bass and occasionaly an 8 or 9 pounder and a few 10 pound fish. We would always throw the 2.5 pound fish and bigger back and keep the smaller ones.
After a couple years of awesome fishing it got to where we would hardly catch anything over 4 pounds but all the fish seemed healthy. Over the past 5 yrs we haven't caught anything over 4 pounds. I thought it might be due to them being overpopulated but all the fish look very healthy.
Anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks, Nate

Maybe they're getting hook shy? Depending on how much you fish and change to different types of bait. I don't know but someone will chime in with a correct answer soon I hope. I'd like to hear what they say too.

I'm not qualified to guess where a bunch of 7 to 10 lb fish went. Like Cisco says, they may have gotten conditioned(educated). Try a 6 inch bluegill.

How is your forage base? I'm betting there are some gaps that are influencing growth to get the bass above 4 or 5 pounds.

How is your water quality? Is it fertile enough to support a huge forage base?

The water quality is pretty clear. The amount of forage in the pond is not what it should be but hasn't changed much over the years. We went back yesterday and caught a bunch of 1 pound to 1.5 pound kinda skinny fish. My dad told me that's all he caught the other day as well. Maybe I am in denial. I am leaning more towards being overpopulated now. We caught propably 15-20 of them in about 1.5 hrs yesterday. We did catch one that was about 2.5 pounds but wasn't very healthy. If this is the case how many would you recommend taking out of there?

Do you keep catch records from anglers. Those records will tell the story. Several presentations at last week's Pond Boss Conference addressed your problems very well. If you were there you would have a very good plan to start analyzing your problem and fixing it. There is lots of good information here about fixing overpopulated & over crowded bass problems. The Jan-Feb 2011 back-issue of PBoss magazine tells all about your problem. Articles were: What To Do About Overcrowded Bass (Lusk), and Fish Biology 103: How Can I Tell If MY Bass Are Overpopulated (Willis & Lusk). I suggest you read that back issue and search the Common Pond Q&A Archives for lots of advice. Come back with questions if you still need answers.
You will get a little help by reading these old topics:
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.ph...true#Post251221

The predators are dependent on the prey and the prey are dependent on the water quality. Measure the water clarity with a home made sechi disk. That will tell you something about the planktonic base of the water. That's pretty key to the whole works. The disk should disappear at 18 to 24 inches. Do that and report back.

Good recommendations from Cody.

Can you stock tilapia?