Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking tons of clams and snails

hi i have an 18 acre pond that has tons of snails and clams.. the shoreline is literally littered with clam and snail shells.. the pond has a small yellow perch population with some trophy sized perch, also has largemouth bass but they seem to top out around 12 inches. it has a decent population of pumpkinseed sunfish as well as frogs, salamanders and crayfish. its surprising to me that the bass are so small because i've seen ponds with seemingly far less forage where the bass seemed much fat and healthier. i'm wondering if the large amount of clams and snails are hurting my fish populations, all species included. also does anyone have a reasonable explanation for the small size of my bass. i see small sunfish everywhere and the pond has lots of small salamanders and frogs as well as yellow perch i feel like my bass should be much bigger. the pond has water as deep as 22 ft and has about a 20 by 30 flat filled with lily pads, two islands with surrounding weedbeds, several large rock piles along with one shoreline being covered in rocks and gravel, you see crayfish all over that shoreline, three large tractor tires and a small dock. Judging strictly by appearance you would think i have the perfect small bass lake. any help would be greatly appreciated

Wow after hearing such a detailed description of what sounds like a great pond I gotta see it! Post some pictures if you can.

Maybe you need more LMB of better genetics..

Pumpkinseeds won't spawn multiple times a year (that I know of). I think that you don't have enough forage in there for the amount of LMB that are there.

What size are the PS that you normally catch? Same for the YP.

I see no reason why abundant snails and clams would cause bass to remain small... Any reason why you think they are affecting your bass? Other than crayfish, pumpkinseeds and yellow perch what other forage does your pond have for the bass? As esshup said, pumpkinseeds are not nearly as prolific as BG. They generally only spawn once a year unlike BG which will spawn 2, 3 or even 4 times per year in PA.

Do you have an abundant amount of submerged vegetation in your pond? If you have large amounts of smaller perch but a good number of LMB in the 12" range, this indicates to me there may be too much submerged vegetation in your pond making it harder for them to effectively prey on the available forage...

He could also just have too many bass. Why not thin the predators? What is the relative weight (Wr) of a sampling of your bass? If bass are very easy to catch you probably have too many bass. I suspect taht you are seeing lots of small sunfish because the abundant bass have then pushed into shallow water for refuge??? Is the pond weedy esp in mid-summer as questioned? Without proper harvest of an 18 ac pond bass can easily become overcrowded. This can be good or bad depending.

yeah during summer the pond gets pretty weedy but not what i would consider extreme. i've been hesitent to stock bluegills because i figured they would outcompete the yellow perch and my perch would die off. i'm guessing without adding bluegill my only real option is to remove quite a few bass from the pond. i've tryed adding shiners but the tiny bass wipe them out in no time at all no matter how many i put in at once.

as far as the relative weight of the bass i would say out of every 30 or so only one or two is over 1.5 lbs and very few fish longer than 13 inches. but i have caught 5 lb bass out of the pond in the past few years but only twice. so it probably is very overcrowded.

You have a misunderstanding of relative weight. There are charts with the length of bass and what it should weigh. You take the chart and compare your bass weights with the correct length. It gives you an idea of how the bass are doing.

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