IMO each smallie could eat 150-200 small PS/yr. Keep removing PS until you get about 150-200 out for each SMB added (50) or until trapping yields essentially no PS. Some PS will learn to avoid the traps. This totals 7500-10000 PS to remove. You are getting an idea how many fish a predator eats. Don't worry about taking out too many YOY PS.
If we calculate the above numbers it looks something like this.
PS 1"long =abt 0.6g. 1.5"long= 1.5g.
SMB 4" long = weighs abt 16g, 6" long smallie weights abt 55g. A weight gain of 39grams over a growing season.
To gain 39g, I figured 60% of 10:1 weight conversion was consumed fish thus 39gx6 = 234grams of fish consumed for each bass to gain 39g X 50 bass = 11,700 grams of fish eaten required to gain those 11,700grams of bass weight/growth.
11,700g of PS = 19,500 1" PS or 7,800 1.5" PS.
If you don't catch any YOY in your trapping this summer-fall. Then it would be okay to add some of this years crop from a hatchery so you have some of this year's year class of YP. I wouldn't put any more than 100/ac 2"-4" YP or 3"-5". I'm not sure why you had no successful YP recruitment this spring. The spring weather was an odd year for YP spawning, although hatches did occur in many ponds. Actually in my YP pond I would prefer not to have YP hatches because this allows for faster growth of YP and good control of numbers. YP are not that expensive to have to stock 100/ac each yr which would provide fast growth due to lower densities and lack of overcrowding.
In theory without a YP harvest and if one started with 200YP/ac and added 100YP per/ac/yr and assuming YP have a life span of 8-10 yrs. at the end of 8 yrs there would be around 800-900YP/ac. If one harvested 50/ac/yr that would still leave about 400/ac.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 06/20/12 06:44 PM.
