Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Frustrating 4th year of a 4 1/2 acre pond! Help!

Pond Information- 23 year old 4.5 acre pond 60 miles north of Augusta in South Carolina.
Silted heavily at the back with a smaller pond beavers have created behind the pond.
Spring and creek feed. In the worst of droughts the pond doesn't drop.
Max depth 8 feet. Average depth 4-6 feet in the front 4 acres and the back 1/2 acre gradually rises from several feet to inches of water from gradual silting over 20 years and possible beaver muskrat activity.



#1. First, I was told that it was probably over-crowded with bass since it is 20 years old and rarely fished when we purchased the property. That's wasn't the case.

#2. Bream were small and bass were small. So I started feeding a quality feed to increase the size of the bream and so the bream would have more offspring to feed the bass. This immensely helped the bluegill grow to mammoth sizes and reproduce like crazy. The bass fishing unchanged or worse. So by this point I figure out that my pond is actually over-crowded with bream.

#3. So, I stock it with 215 hybrid bass to help reduce smaller fish populations. Well, 3 years later all I have is a bunch of 3-4.5 lb hybrids that ate thousands of pounds of feed and never leave the feeding area, so i've began to eradicate them and ive almost completed that process or put a huge dent in them (which was really fun)

#4. I know there are a few, and I emphasize a few bigger bass in the pond. I've seen them on the bed during the spawn and two 5 lb bass have been caught in 4 years. But combine that with no 4 lb bass. maybe 1 3lb bass, maybe 5 1-2 lb. bass and a few not a lot of less than 10 inch bass.

#5. Now, in year 4 im pretty sure that my pond is over crowded with bream. I catch them everywhere throughout the pond in various sizes, but bass are just not here. Ive read that if you get the blue gill numbers in check that the largemouth will come back.........

Does anybody have any advice. I'm not in a financial position to do anymore than feed the fish and catch fish. I'd like to catch a big bass or two but the bigger bass I'm sure eat at will as I catch bream when I fish out here.

My plan of now is to decimate as many bream as I can especially smaller size bream that big bass can eat and only throwing back the biggest of bream, and I mean the absolute biggest like 1 3/4 lbs. Yes. I have bream close too two lbs since ive started feeding a quality feed. I just wish I had some largemouth to go with them.

Any suggestions I will gladly appreciate

Thanks in adavance

How much fishing pressure has the pond seen in the past 3-5 years? It could be that the LMB are there, but just too educated to take an artificial bait. Have you tried fishing with a large shiner or a 3"-4" BG as bait?

Hybrid Bass. You talking about Hybrid Striped Bass, Florida/Northern Black Bass cross or a Largemouth/Smallmouth cross?

Stock 30 female bass 8-14 inches if you're sure about the size structure of your bluegill population. Get them from a hatchery so you aren't transplanting stunted, older bass from someone else's pond. Talk to Robbie at American Sportfish or pm me for more info.

Someone in a thread not too long ago, might have been Bill Cody but not sure, talked about their predators getting "lazy". Something like they had learned to feed off the commercial feed and quit eating their proper diet of bream. Seems like a complaint about all the BG biting swimmers there were so many.

As I recall, his solution was to cut off the feed bag for a while. The predators got hungry and started seriously working on the forage fish.

If it was Bill or whoever it was that posted it, maybe they will chime in and relate.

It has been a month or so ago, but if you have the time to go back and find it, it might be at least part of your solution.

I'm no expert, just relaying what I think I've read. Maybe you need to cut off the feed bag for a while? Maybe your bass have learned to eat feed instead of fish?

When BG get over abundant they can control bass recruitment by too many BG raiding bass nests and eating eggs and newly hatched fry (pre-swim up). This might be one of your problems contributing to too few bass. Since a creek empties into the pond are you positive that some of the small sunfish are not green sunfish (GSF). GSF thrive in streams that are pathways into a pond. GSF are great nest egg robbers.

We never got an answer about type of hybrid fish that were stocked. Do we assume they were HSB? HSB if fed pellets do not eat a lot of sunfish. A better stocking IMO would have been the larger LMB 8"-12" for control of BG instead of HSB.

Look into building some sort of fish trap to catch sunfish/BG. Fish the trap each weekend and move it around to different locations when catch rate decreases. And / oR get a cub scout troop to have a BG fishing derby. If the sunfish-BG of 3"-6" are real abundant plan to remove at least 300-500/ac to allow the bass to start recruiting young bass into the fishery. At the same time it would be beneficial to add 10-25 LMB/ac (all 8"-12"). Stocking just fingerling bass into a overcrowded sunfish pond is not very successful.

We have this problem in our little pond. I feel sorry for someone that tries to go skinny dipping in there!!!lol
I hope that slows down this year and next since we stocked ours with fingerling bass last summer.

Where is a river Otter when you need one?