My pond is 5 years old. It was made and stocked to be a trophy bass pond. It was stocked with Tigerbass from American Sportfish in Alabama. I put 12,000 Bream, 15,000 Fathead minnows and 10,000 shad in it 1.5 years before the bass were put in. The bream are fed daily. To start with the bass was really really aggressive. That lasted up until about 1.5 to 2 years ago. Now I can not hardly catch a bass on a bait. They seam to have lost there aggressiveness. They will not hit a artificial lure. I have caught some 6+ pounders out of it. I see the bass chasing shad all the time but they are uncatchable. The pond is fertilized to maintain the water clarity. I was using a management program but now I can not manage it properly because I can not get them to bite a lure. 2 years ago I also put Talapia in the pond to give the bass something else to eat. Of course they all died off in the winter.
The bream are doing really good. They are all of different sizes from hatch lings to 8-10 inches.
The shad is also thriving very well. They are all ways schooling and get hammered by the bass.
I am going to lime it in a couple of weeks to get the acidity back right. Not sure if that will help the bite though ?
I have also been told by the people that Manage Bear Lake in Washington County Alabama that the Tigerbass will loose it aggressiveness if they do not have any competition fro food and the food is plentiful. They told me to add striped bass to the pond to give the tigerbass competition and they would become very aggressive again and very catch able again. They did that in there lake and it is a awesome lake to fish in. There tigerbass are very very aggressive.
I need some help on what to do ? If I can not do something to change there aggressiveness so that they will bit a lure again then I am going to end up with a very out of balance pond with the bass.
Please help !!!
