Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations DEFORMED/ UNDERWEIGHT BASS

I HAVE RECENTLY CAUGHT A FEW BASS THAT APPEAR TO BE DEFORMED OR LOOK LIKE THEY ARE STARVING. THE BASS HAVE THE HEAD OF A 4LB BASS WITH THE BODY BEING THAT OF A 2LB BASS. MIGHT THEY BE WAITING TO GO ON THEIR FALL FEEDING PATTERNS? IF OVER POPULATED, WHICH SIZE BASS SHOULD I SELECTIVELY HARVEST? I HAVE BEEN FEEDING PELLETS, BUT IT APPEARS THAT ONLY THE SUNFISH EAT THE PELLETS. ANY IDEAS HOW TO GET THE BASS TO FEED ON PELLETS?

YOUR CAPS ARE ON!!!

You have population issues.. Either to many bass or not enough sunfish or both.. Bass will not feed train.

Depending on the size of your pond, I'd remove all LMB 12" and smaller. Also, if you don't have a good size mix of forage, your BG may be to big for the LMB to eat.

I dont think you can get the your bass to eat pellets even if starving. Not your adult bass. In order for bass to become feed trained this is something that starts in the beginning stages of their life. I was able to feed train mine by stocking some in aquariums as fingerlings. And even then they all did not take to the feed. But I have quite a few bass in my pond that are feed trained. I can catch those with bread, pellets, dog food, etc. They bite and feed on everything that the bream bites and feed.

Your bass being underweight is because there is not enough food to go around or you have too many hiding places (Structure or plants and weeds) and they cant catch their prey. They are out of balance. You are going to have to remove bass. When I went through this I corrected it by removing only 12 bass. But my pond is only a 3rd acre. And looking back I wish I had removed only about 8 or 9. Hope this helps

How do the rest of the bass look?

Sometimes a few skinny bass can be the result of catch and release fishing injuries, or the ingestion of soft plastic baits into the stomach.

What if you dump a bucket of minnows for the bass to feed on? Would that help or not?

Well, considering that it takes 10 pounds of "minnows" that are between 1/4 and 1/3 the length of the bass to put one pound of weight on ONE bass, how big will your bucket be?

I'll bet your fish looks similar to this one. Our lake lacks cover for our forage fish and the more aggressive peacock bass out jockey the largemouth bass for the shad population.

Wow, that has to be the most emaciated LMB I've ever seen.

If this fish is the only one that you have caught that looks emaciated then I would not worry about it as it could be a result of an injury from being hooked previously. If you are catching a lot of small/stunted/emaciated bass then you need to introduce more forage and remove stunted fish ASAP!
Adding some bluegill or golden shiners will help dramatically but they won't spawn in the winter so it would make more sense to stock them in the spring. In the meantime cull out any and all undersized bass you catch.