Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Raising Forage and Bait Golden shiner stocking since lake is low

quote=Bob Lusk]For a lake that size, stocking golden shiners may work, it may not. It depends why the bass aren't growing. If bass are overcrowded, you can stock all kinds of forage fish and it probably won't matter, especially in such a large lake.

Is this one of the Innsbruck Lakes?


@MOfisherman, this above is part of why I asked about age structure. Your "low density" may be related to other concerns.
I have a lake I help with that has what appears to be "low density" numbers but loads and loads of forage. After doing some age verification, (Just finished up) we found several of our 8-10" bass were 7+ yrs old-then naturally dead-shortly after. Forage base present are good numbers of reproducing BG, BCP & WCP, Gizzard shad and a fair number of crayfish.
I don't want to imply by any means what is stated in above posts is incorrect, but LMB in low numbers can't be the only thing left in your BOW. There is surely other species that should be loading the lake with biomass if LMB are low density. If not, this leads me to think in simple terms, low proper habitat-which isn't as simple as it sounds, is an issue.
Macrophytes in large expanse are very important, but if fry are present in any number, of any species, with low density LMB, there should be large numbers of something else.
My 2 cents are likely worth 1 cent at best compared to some of these other folks but I feel like adding more forage is not going to fix your issue. It's obviously not heavy predation that's causing it (the problem). It sounds like a lack of large amounts of proper ambush cover and a lack of (proper)nursery habitat. If the grass is terrestrial in nature, that will be short lived and an oxygen burner, if it is aquatic then things may be different.
There very well could be factors involved we don't even know about, but I'm a strong believer in what we first see as a problem is usually the result of a problem we aren't looking at.