After re-reading this thread about your pond conditions of murky water, bullheads, abundant BG and probably lots of 2019 small bullheads may not be adequate for growing YP. Are your YP still as thin as your pictures of them in the end of Sept 2019? Catch several and verify.
Lots of bullheads have made their way in due to their prolific recruitment with the lack of adequate predation of all BH sizes less than 6" long. BH are not getting eaten by HSB because BH are primarily a bottom oriented fish and HSB are an open water oriented fish thus they are not in frequent association / interaction. LMB are a more bottom, shallow, and structure oriented predator where BH like to 'hang out'.
BG could be crowding out the YP for pellets which forces pellet trained YP to forage on natural foods. I've seen pellet dependent YP get unusually skinny when not getting pellets and with a pond full of small minnows. 'Unusually skinny' with big heads and thin concave bodies is the way your fish appear.
I don't think adding FHM this spring will help your situation because the HSB and BH will likely get most of the FHM. Plus IMO a big percentage of the pellet trained YP are not very good fish predators.
Since your current fishery is struggling, I think your best plan to most quickly salvage your fishery and going forward toward a more balanced fishery is resort to adding LMB to control BG and BH. I would not add fingerling LMB because for their best survival rate you want them to immediately start eating the abundance of small fish 1.5"-3" which means 6"-8" bass. I would over stock bass numbers (80-100/ac) and later thin them out as needed. If you use larger sized stocker bass you might get success with 50-80/ac, but it will take longer to achieve prey - predator balance and rapidly growing fish.
Overabundant bass results in producing large BG and BH. Many of the 2019 crop of BH should be 2.5"-3.5" plus you also have the 2019 crop of small BG. For the first year or two you may have to make a concerted effort to help the LMB reduce the high numbers of small fish so this small fishes group will not grow into the 4"-6" size range and overpopulate the pond = food shortages.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 02/11/20 04:44 PM.
