Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Standard LMB slot limit

My bg/lmb pond has recovered nicely from a winter fish kill a few years back. My neighbor is limited to harvesting 50-60 BG in this 1.2 acre pond to keep these under control and he is the only one to remove fish. There seems to be a limited number of LMB and some seem to be getting large. Is there any reason to start removing LMB especially within a certain size range (slot limit)? Can one favor trophy LMB by removing all caught LMB within a slot length? The pond is probably never fished more than a dozen times per year. My neighbor is very respectful and will try to do what I want.

I would think, if he was like u and had a winter kill and a restart I would have to look at lmb recruitment. If the bg have outnumbered and outsized his lmb population to where he has no survival of his lmb spawn, then I might not have a slot limit. It would depend on his lmb Wr and numbers. It depends

Well maybe I should just ask that he pull out any LMB that are not fat?

I think it depends on what your goal is for the pond. Big BG? Big LMB? or .....

Trophy LMB

Read through this thread about LMB harvest.
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=466497#Post466497

I have been following, but I need to give some simple advice that might help. I will ask that that thin fish get removed. Maybe some will get removed when they should not, but I think little harm will get done.

If you feel compelled to harvest, then culling bass 12" and under is a safe recommendation. That means you harvest the youngest fish. In order to come up with a confident recommendation, you need data. When you say, "...recovering nicely..." what does that mean? You refer to your fish kill as "several years ago..." If you've had excellent recruitment of bass over the last two years, I'd be culling two year old bass. Since you're allowing harvest of bluegill, that could suggest recruitment of bass may not be high. If it were my pond, with such a helpful neighbor, I'd ask him to weigh and measure some fish, look at relative weights and then decide what your slot limit should be. I wouldn't guess at it, especially since your goal is trophy bass.

Thanks for the suggestion on culling less than 12" LMB. By "recovering nicely", I mean that I see fewer fish that look well fed, and I see lots of small fish (plenty of food). I overstocked initially based on the fish suppliers recommendation (had not yet found this site). I am not willing to weigh fish, so I will not ask my neighbor to do what I am unwilling to do. I think I know what a fat fish looks like and trust my neighbor to know the same. Maybe all LMB under 12" and any skinny fish. I am OK with just improving things while maybe not optimizing things.

I follow your thought process of common sense culling...as long as the neighbor has that same sense. That's part of the fun of having a pond and being the decision maker.

My neighbor and his wife are retired and perfect neighbors. We help each other out like neighbors did commonly in the past. My wife and I are lucky to have great neighbors. This has not always been the case, so we really appreciate what we have now.

I would talk to him about it and see if he might want to weigh and keep records. There are some of us that actually enjoy the record keeping, weighing, measuring... It kind of slows the fishing process, and if you have limited BOW, it actually increases the amount of time you can spend at the pond. I actually really enjoy seeing how the fish are doing, ALMOST as much as the catching. So for me it adds to the experience.

Can't hurt to ask. I do not even have a scale, but I do have a measure stick on the dock rail.

You can buy a digital postal scale at Walmart or Amazon for around twenty dollars. I have a postal scale and a Rapala digital fish scale. Both were under 20$/each.

RAH,

If you want to set a lower size limit for LMB culling/harvest, here's what I would do...

Assuming appropriate forage size for LMB is 25 to 40 per cent of their length, then if your trophy LMB are currently say 20 inches long, appropriate forage size is 5 to 8 inches. Based on this I would leave LMB smaller than 8 inches as they are forage of appropriate size for the trophies. Those 8 inch and smaller LMB are then available to eat some of the smaller BG up to about 3 inches (40% of their length) which are too small for your trophies anyway. Removing many of the small BG will increase the food available to the remaining BG allowing them to grow faster to an appropriate size for your trophies. The 8 inch LMB are also too small to eat the 5 inch BG that are the lower range of appropriate forage for your trophies so they do not represent competition to the trophies.

Might also be a win win by leaving those smallest LMB. IMO a good chance of both Bigger BG and Bigger LMB.

Just my 1 cent

So maybe remove all thin LMB over 8"? BTW - Most of the pond goes unfished. Most fishing is from the dock.

IMO you have a recommendation from Bob L. to remove LMB under 12 inches so I would set that as the upper limit of the slot. The slot would then be to remove all LMB 8 to 12 and any skinny ones bigger than that. I'm not a pro, it just seems logical to me.

IMO with the very limited fishing that is done in the pond, I'm doubtful you can make a significant impact one way or the other angling.

Edit: BTW this discussion is strictly about culling right? You still plan to harvest a few bigger fish, even if they aren't skinny?

Got it: 8-12" + skinny. I have been told the same thing about whitetail buck improvement:



Don't put much stack in nagativism. Have at least 3 trophy prospects for next year based on trail cams after the season.

No plan to harvest trophy fish. I find that pushing things gently in the right direction works fine if you are patient.