Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations To Many Bass?

Hello All,

My name is Luke and I have been reading and gleaning a lot of valuable information from this site over the last year or so. I would like to thank everyone for all the great advice given here.

I have a one acre pond in NE Iowa. It was dug last year and fed by some run off and springs from the hill. The pond is lined with blue clay and holds water great. The pond filled all the way in early spring and has remained at full pool all summer with water flowing through the overflow pipe. The pond itself is a max depth of 20ft and average of 12ft. I have 2 bottom diffuser aerators going 24/7. The pond also has good structure and a beach/swimming area.

In the fall of last year at 1/2 pool I stocked 5 gallon fathead minnows. This spring at full pool I stocked 1000 HBG, 200CC, and 200LMB and 5 gallon more minnows. I feed a high quality food once a day as much as they will eat in 10 minutes.

I have a lot of the LMB and CC and HBG eating every evening. From reading on here I am thinking I may be a little heavy on the CC and LMB. My young sons and I have fished this 3 times. We catch a lot of healthy fat appearing bass in the 7-9 inch range, a lot of HBG in the 5-6 inch range. We caught 2 CC and these were both 11 inches and healthy

My question is should I start to remove some of the bass before winter? There just seems to be so many of them and am worried about stunting and them taking some biomass away from the other fish in the pond.

Goals for the pond are good fishing/swimming for me and my 2 young sons with large HBG and to use the LMB to control the population so there is no recruitment. I also like to catch and eat the CC so we will be taking these out when they are in the 1-2 lb range.

My numbers FWIW:

Assuming all fish are around 100% relative weight and using 12" data for both the CC and LMB (conservative carrying capacity)

1000 HBG @5-6" - .1lb/fish or 100lbs total
200 CC@ 11" - .5lb/fish or 100lbs total
200 LMB@7-9" - .5lbs/fish or 100lbs total

Total of 300lbs of fish in 1 acre fed and aerated pond. If it were my pond here in MN, things would be looking very good. Maybe a little light on the HBG numbers for your goals. Personally I wouldn't touch the bass numbers. But next year at this time I would be on a mission to knock back those CC and dirty a lot of grease!

I would consider those numbers (LMB and CC) to be heavy also. However, with your stated goal being large HBG, those high predator numbers should certainly encourage good results. I would definitely harvest those CC as they can be real pellet hogs at feeding time, and might bully the HBG away from the feed.

Keep your eyes peeled for excessive aquatic vegetation, you will want to stay on top of things once it gets a foothold.

How much are you feeding every evening? (lbs ?)

Sprkplug I have been feeding 2-3 pounds of feed a night. This will vary from night to night depending on weather conditions and how much they are eating. I also have been trying to stay on top of the vegetation. I have been raking the FA from time to time. Most of the bank is covered in erosion stone into about 2-3 feet of water so far no problems but will definetly keep a close eye on things.

I stocked my HBG to LMB at a 10:1 ratio, and have been well pleased thus far with no signs of recruitment. You will need to stock additional HBG every couple years or so, in order to keep fish moving up through the ranks, so you may want to keep a rough estimate of how many you remove every year.

I'll bet you will see several LMB take to feed, especially with so little forage available.