I have a 1.3 acre farm pond in Iowa that once held very nice bluegill, largemouth bass, and an occasional crappie. In 2012 or so this pond froze out (winter kill). We thought it was a total kill but noticed small fish the next spring. We added about 50 LMB in the 12 to 14 inch range thinking this would control the smaller fish population and we would get back to where we were soon. After all, it was in great balance before the winter. A few things happened in the following years. One, we added an aerator. Two, the pond clarity never got back to where it was before the freeze out. This I can't figure out why. 2012 was a bad drought and I don't know if something changed in the pond or what. It used to be clear and grow surface algae. Since then it's been too murky to grow hardly any. So fast forward to now. We have a stunted population of bluegill and crappie and the bass hardly grew from when we added them. Not sure why the bass did not to grow. I thought they should have done well with the large forage population. We did add 100 catfish in 2013 or 14. They have grown to 3 or 4 pounds a few maybe 5 pounds. We have removed some of those. Last year we added alum to clear the water and that did help some. This year we are going to add bacteria to help with any dead and decaying material to help clear the water up some more.
We have removed 2500 bluegill and crappie the last couple years. I am wondering if we remove more and add some large bass (3+ lbs) and add a feeding program can we get this pond back into balance? Or do we need to start over by killing all the fish and restocking.
Thanks
