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Good Morning, I have been using the resources of the Pond Boss forum for sometime and recently read (and read) Bob L book on Raising Trophy Bass. I live in St. Louis, Missouri (Go Cards) and have been bass fishing since a kid. I currently have a place about 45 west of my home at a development named Innsbrook Resort in Warren County. It has about 100 lakes of various sizes. Most of the bass in the lakes are all stunned 10 to 14 inches. My goal in life is to turn a few of these lakes into trophy bass fisheries!! Looking forward to everyone's advice and suggestions along the way. Chris

What size is it and how much control of the water body do you have where your Innsbrook home is? Generally the less control you have, the lower the results of your goals. Stunted bass in ponds is a common problem. It is easy to get too many foxes in a hen house.

Welcome aboard, MOFisherman! My family doc moved to Innsbrook a few years ago. Aren't the water's there "State managed"? I'm in Maryland Heights.

Innsbrook is privately owned by a corporation that actively manages the resources for the property owners. I have a very good relationship with the mangement team and they are open to improving the fishing throughout the development. Lakes vary in size from 1 to 200 acres.
I have a building lot on the largest lake, 200 acres. This lake has been around for about 10 years. I have extensive photos before it filled, have mapped the lake with my fish finder, and use to catch large bass, 5-6-8 lbs when it just got filled. The cover is all gone around the lake, the water is ultra clear (10-15 feet), paddlefish were stocked when it filled (would these larger fish impact plankton production 48-60 inch fish), people are catching fewer fish these days.
I have recently added habitat, feed fish last year, and really want to improve this lake.
I have convinced the management that good fishing will attract a potential buyer for properties. They are all ears and want me to take the lead.

Glad to hear from another Missouri based fishermen. The waters are privately owned and not under state management. The management group is a great group of guys that like the outdoors and appreciate quality family activities, like fishing. I think I have them convinced good fishing is good for their business.

I can upload a few pictures if someone can tell me how to do that..

Welcome to the forum.

The pictures have to be hosted on an on-line service like Photobucket first, at least that is how I do it. I can not seem to get the computer to photo gallery thing going but I'm not very computer smart.

Thanks, I will look into that.

MoFishermen, welcome to the forum. I've learned a lot hanging around here.
I opened up an account in photobucket.com (free for new members with a small number of pics) and then link the pictures here.
We thought long and hard about Innsbrook, but ended up buying property up by Mark Twain. Much longer drive, but I'm somewhat of a loner.. So it's right for me.
I have ridden my motorcycle many times along Charette Creek Rd, through the creek in many places. It comes out near Insbrook. It sure looks pretty in there. Lots of mature timber.
Some of the wiser folks here also do some consulting work. You might approach the board out there about having a consultant come in and put together a plan for a few of the lakes. Just a thought..
Jeff

That is a lot of water to manage and to do it right it will take a professional. Innsbrook has more than 7,500 acres and over 100 lakes, with that amount of water it could keep a creative, educated, fishery management person busy full time. It all depends on what value they put on the sport fish experience.
http://www.innsbrook-resort.com/pdf/map.pdf
Without proper management it is common for a lake to initially produce larger high quality bass and then gradually trend toward smaller bass of an unbalanced fishery. Rejuvenating an unbalanced fishery in a water body takes a lot of effort. The bigger the lake it takes proportionally more effort.

I can understand the impact of trying to effectively manage the large number of lakes. However, I thought I could start with a few smaller lakes and work through to a few others along the way. It is a unique situation where you have all these lakes together, so you could actually try different management techniques and do a comparison. Almost like a large aquatic research lab.
I am just trying to get a hand on how to work through something this encompassing. Any college students looking for a summer fisheries job to assist with evaluating and analysis?

What a cool place. Do you have a budget? You could do something amazing, but it might not be cheap. I am not an expert, and you definitely need one.

With that disclaimer, here are some hare-brained ideas.

One simple, relatively inexpensive way to start would be to take two of the smaller ponds and manage one of them for big bass, and the other for big bluegill. Lots of info on here on how to do that by selective harvest.

You could also dedicate individual ponds to raise forage fish in monoculture to feed to the other fish.

Another idea would be to have one be a smallmouth fishery. Key to success of this idea would be to have NO LARGEMOUTH, as well as the right habitat and forage.

In the smallest ponds, species with limited reproduction and abundant pelleted food can also do well without too much management. Hybrid bluegill and hybrid striped bass have limited reproduction and are really fun to catch.

I was thinking we would focus on a limited number of the ponds for improvement. I like your suggestion on creating ponds dedicated to certain species.

My budget, I have not idea. How much does it cost to have a lake electrofished to determine fish conditions?

Would it be feasible to drain a small pond with a trash pump and lime treat a pond to start over, tabula rasa? That is very cheap to do.

As for the price, consider starting with a consultation with a management expert to discuss goals and budget before jumping straight to EF. That may or may not be necessary, depending on what you want to do.

I should add, call "Rainman" Rex! See above -- he's in your area and is a top notch guy.