He doesn't say what size they were when he stocked them. It would be interesting to see what the WE is after 1 year. What would one expect from a healthy SC pond? 6-8" or so?
I cull based on the WE and general looks and fight of the fish is why I was questioning timing of cull is all.
The fish farm said the were 4" to 6", but most of the LMB were about 4" back in Mar 2011.
We want to have a good balanced fishing pond leaning toward more LMB fishing.
We just did some electrofishing in a clients new"ish" pond today (in coastal SC). We stocked bream last year, fatheads and threadfins this spring, and 3-4" fingerling F1 bass on June 16th...less than 3 months ago. The smallest bass we picked up was 8.5"...the biggest was 11.1".
If you have a healthy forage base, I would expect your fish to easily be 13-15" by next fall...with proper food, bass can grow pretty quick down here.
As far as how many to remove, I agree with Dave and Greg...as many of those 2nd generation fish as you can get. Just make sure you are not taking out any of your original stock...especially of your bass are F1s as those will be your fastest growers. Once you start fishing next year, it should be fairly easy to tell if they are originals or not.
