Originally Posted By: djstauder
Griff,
From reading here, and my experience, small ponds in the south tend to overpopulate with large mouth bass (LMB). When this occurs, the LMB won't grow much over about 14-15" and tend to stay skinny, in other words, their weight does not keep up their length. You will have alot of small bass. Assuming you have bluegill (BG) as forage, you will have some very large bluegill as they will get big enough that the 14" LMB cannot predate. You will have some very small BG (1-3") but nearly medium size as the overpopulated LMB will eat those first.

From reading here, it seems that small ponds in the north get overpopulated with BG.

There is a couple of books available from the pondposs.com site, "Perfect Pond-Want One?" and "Basic Pond Management" that would be helpful. My pond is in Mississippi, and I got alot of useful advice from this document before building mine: http://www.mdwfp.com/media/24904/farmpondmanagebooklet.pdf

Hope this helps some.
Dan


This is what I am saying.

Speaking from experience, we had an acre pond that all sizes of LMB in it. This was great for a few years then the LMB spawned several. One could catch a bass every cast but they were are all small in size. I am not sure catching bass between two people even if it was done most of the year could keep up with LMB reproduction. That is where other management techniques come into play.