Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations What do I do now?

I've been actively managing my bass pond for almost two years now. It's a standard BG/LMB (and gambusia) pond. It's 1.75 acres and 20 feet deep in the middle. My goal for this pond is to be able to catch decent sized LMB regularly and to catch big ones occasionally. I don't care about catching BG at all.

In the last two years I've added a fair amount of cover. Installed a feeder to throw out GFC for the BG. And I've been harvesting every bass that's less than 90-95% relative weight. My tracking spreadsheet is here if you're interested. We're catching bigger fish and releasing more that are the right weight. But there are still lots that are skinny. I know it takes time though. If you have any thoughts on my tracking sheet please let me know.

My main question now is whether I should be harvesting any BG. We used to only see (and catch) big BG. Now we're seeing more sizes. But it's still heavily tilted toward the big ones. (I would consider "big" to be over 8 inches.) I've seen two different ideas on this forum: 1) don't harvest any BG because their spawn is what the LMB will eat. 2) harvest BG to shape their population to fit the LMB's needs.

I would lean toward #2, but I'm not sure. If I go with #2 how do I decide what to harvest?

I know you like pics, so here's a recent harvest of skinny bass. It's the 4/30/2011 harvest on the spreadsheet.

I like the spreadsheet Nathan. When were the bass stocked? I stocked mine a year ago next month but haven't caught one yet. I'd like to see what the experts say about the BG. I think you want to go ahead start keeping the big males if I read correctly on other posts. One male can "take care of" many females. Those are some nice looking fish. A little skinny but not bad according to your chart. Good work!

It's my opinion that removing some of the larger males will open more biomass for more smaller and medium sized BG which you are lacking.

I would , based on the limited info, (always dangerous to rely on limited info), choose between 3 approaches.

1. Keep doing as is.

2. Add some adult CNBG to help with BG #s (the LMB need more food or their #s greatly reduced or a combo of both)

3. Increase feeding and harvest a few mid-sized BG (if you want to harvest BG).

Big male BG and healthy female BG are the key as they reproduce more offspring. When small male BG are doing the spawning you reduce all BG growth which can result in either BG overcrowding at a small size or very limited BG reproduction to adulthood due to predation (moving toward a LMB only pond). What you are doing in a LMB/BG pond as noted by many studies is trying to balance both populations in the middle at an inherently unstable point where the two normal states are BG crowded or LMB crowded. The pond tries to move to one of the 2 stable states and your job is to try and balance them in the inherently unstable middle. Tweaking that balance (is what you are doing) by mgt takes time when done in the manner you are using.

What CJ is bring up is very important because if the pond is at carrying capacity ( about 2 years after stocking in the south) then you have to make room for whatever tweaking you are going to do. Or increase the carrying capacity which can effect water quality.

What would help us is the % of small , med and large BG and LMB in the populations and their condition fat , avg , skinny.

My all to simple answer to the general question is don't remove BG when a pond is LMB crowded and don't remove LMB from a BG crowded pond. Remove what is crowded and or add to what is missing if you want balance. If you elect to increase carrying capacity then you have more room to work with but watch your water quality.

Thanks for the feedback guys. Especially the part about trying to balance at an inherently unstable point. That makes sense. And gives perspective to the challenge of managing this pond.

The bass were stocked about 25 years ago when the pond was built. I don't know what happened for the first 7 years. After year 7 the pond was fished off and on but very little was harvested. Starting about two years ago I started fishing it more often and harvesting all the bass that looked skinny, which was most of them. Over the years it's produced a few 8 pound LMB (or maybe the same one caught multiple times).

Last year I fed 2 bags of generic catfish food. This year I switched to GFC. I'm on track to do maybe 4 bags during the growing season. Water quality hasn't been an issue at all yet.

I think I can add some formulas to the spreadsheet to keep track of the % small, med, large and fat, avg, skinny. At least for the LMB. I've wanted to do that anyway so that I can monitor progress in a more objective way. What would you think about: small = 0-10", medium = 10-14", large = 14"+. And skinny = <90%Wr, average = 90-105%Wr, fat = 105+%Wr. Should I do the breakdown for each size class? Since presumably it would be helpful to know (for example) that most of the large fish are fat and most of the small ones are skinny.

For the BG, this is just an estimate based on what we've caught and what I see at the feeder and around the banks. 50% large, 25% med, 25% small. The large ones are fat. And the other ones are skinny to average.

Just for entertainment here is a video of me throwing some GSF to a few LMBs that have grown accustomed to the free meal.

I should have studied the spread sheet in more detail before I posted. Very nice job and no need to change it. Plenty of LMB data there. The more data part was with respect to BG. RW data will tell the story on both.

If you have enough capacity I would suggest you keep doing what you are doing and add , depending on budget, some 5 inch CNBG. That will speed the recovery of the BG population.Removing the LMB will add carrying capacity for BG provided they have enough to eat. It is good if your LMB are eating pellets as well.

Would be good to do a seine survey for data on BG sizes and numbers.

OH THAT IS JUST WRONG!

Those bass better eat their Wheaties. Messing with GSF could hurt.

The other day I caught a 5 inch GSF in one of my traps in the upper pond. I usually just throw those in the woods or put them in my aquaponics system. But I decided to see what would happen if I tried to feed one too the bass. I got them started with a few normal (2-3") sized GSF which they handled with no problems. Then I threw the bigger one in. It was immediately attacked. Silver streaks flashing in the water. Vigorous splashing. But a few seconds later it was swimming away. Albeit with some injuries. Hopefully a bigger badder LMB finds it.

That reminds me of the old saying "What did the other guy look like?".

Any updates on your progress?