That is probably a good idea that will not get done Eric.
There is one side of the 3 acre pond that would relatively lend itself to seining as it is about the only place the bank and lessened structure would allow. Something I will keep in mind for next spring. Seems like if I stay around 3# per acre per day or less I have little water quality problem. The year I was feeding 5-6# the water got a little "thick" to suit my taste.
I don't mind having lots of BG as they are easy and fun to catch, but it just seems like it is hard to get many of them above about 8" with so many of them. I could feed them quite a bit more and help, but then with the amount of watershed and flow through I have (or lack thereof part of the year) the water quality issue comes up.
My 1/20th acre forage pond is getting too many GSF in it anyway (caught 4 more 7" ones last night and been trapping out 1.5" fingerlings) so my current thinking for an interesting foray into fish rearing is to put about 100 fingerling LMB in next spring, raise them through the summer, start catching them out through next fall and the spring of 19 and transferring them to the main pond, then later that fall pump the forage pond down, seine it to remove remaining desirable fish (RES, GS and the rest of the LMB that I could not catch) and nuke it. Let it stay dry and refill over the winter to stock again the next spring.
I waited too late (fish truck has already made our last run for the season) as my intention was to put the LMB in this fall. I think it will have to wait till spring now. The GSF will probably get a certain amount of the LMB fingerlings, but I can fish and trap this 1/20th acre pond heavily and get the GSF numbers pretty low. Can't ever get all of them but I have got it to the point that it becomes exceedingly hard to catch one. At least that is what I thought till last night,
I did catch one 15" LMB the other day which was encouraging. I had stocked 100 fingerlings last fall in hopes some would make it without getting eaten (after all, there is plenty of BG for the existing bass to eat) and the one I caught would have been about the right size for being stocked a year ago. I do not see huge numbers of small BG around the edge. Just healthy numbers. I just seem to have a huge population of the 6-7".
Maybe I just need to fish and fillet some more.
