Pond Boss Forums FISH & FISHING Show off your catch An Epic weekend with the Herman Brothers!

All I know is the 8 to 9 pounders I get in from local lakes have 5 to 6 inch bluegills in them and 8 to 9 inch largemouth bass.

If that is all you know, then that is good information about feeding habits of large walleye.

For more info: an 8 lb WE is around 26"-27" long and a 9 lber is around 27.5-28.5" long. A 29" WE weighs around 10.2 lbs as std wt.

Bill, the problem with trying to raise a big walleye is that it costs too much money and takes too much time. We are content with raising 1-3 lbers as bonus fish to catch, relatively quickly and inexpensively but really there is no demand whatsoever from people wanting to raise trophy walleyes in their private body of water, as crazy as that sounds...

However now that we own more than one body of water, I just may have to take a 2-3 acre pond and focus on just growing some big 'eyes just to learn more about em!

Basically demand is the biggest key to research, maybe we will just have to create the demand...

Nate - I agree with you the 1-3 lb walleye are the best multipurpose WE. For big trophy fish IMO the HSB is the best overall choice and easiest to raise. But for high quality table fare we have to go back to the WE (1-3 lb) or YP.

As far as growing big WE in smaller waters, I was told by a ODNR fish squeezer that worked with DNR pond walleye, WE often top out in ponds at around 5 lbs (23-24"). But as we are learning, that size limiting condition could be due to the type and size of forage fish available. Change the forage available then the WE could grow bigger in smaller waters. If you do some work with growing big WE your experiences will be very good research and baseline information about big WE in ponds. We may learn that growing big WE is not a whole lot different than growing big bass over 5 lbs. Change the forage available for big predators.

My guess is that your tiger musky are eating a significant number of LMB compared to other species.