After dealing with fish for ponds and LMB for around 40 years, these are some of my experiences. You said "The bass were stocked September 1 and were 3 to 4 inches. 7 months later they are 6 inches and 7 inches and thin." Also you said "I am only stocking bass to control Bream."
1. Since your goal is to have LMB as bream control and help produce big bream, I would not be too concerned that they are not real fat at this point in time. Your bass are a tool for sunfish control so ideally you want them lean and mean to consume lots of small BG. The more they eat small BG the better and bigger your bream will become. The larger the bass get the more they will focus on eating larger bream. IMO you want mostly 1"-3" BG getting the heaviest predation which means most of these bream sizes are preyed on heavily by 9"-12" bass. Bigger 15"-17" bass prefer to eat 3.2" to 4.5" BG. Remember that guideline for predation pressure for the size groups of your bream population.
2. I think you ideally do not really want lots of FHM to be present. These FHM will detract from the new young LMB growing and eating this spring's bream new offspring. IMO you do not want the LMB to be eating mostly the abundant FHM and not prey heavily of the new bream hatchlings that will soon be present. I am not sure that I would have initially stocked any FHM with your stated pond goals. You want lean mean hungry small bass to heavily prey on bream late stage fry and small fingerlings to large fingerlings.
3. Years of dealing with many fish farms taught me a lot about how they operate and sell fish. Some are definitely better than others!. Not all are alike. IMO the 3" - 4" LMB that you bought in a TN September were IMO one option of a good bass to buy for your goals. A. 3"-4" LMB in September were either mostly males; males tend to grow a little slower than the females. Males also stay somewhat smaller than female bass. B. A sorted and graded size of bass, or C. a first year class mixture of fish that had been over crowded as fingerlings each not getting ample food. Well fed LMB fry by September should be 5-7" long. See later.
IMO these 3"-4" LMB were good for your stated goals of good control of bream offspring.
Fact Lesson - each hatched year class of bass has a large range of growth potential IF all these fish get all the good foods they can consume. A large Spring hatch of bass grown in a well fed pond will genetically and normally have some slow growers (2"-3") and some very fast growers 7"-9" some maybe 10" and the bulk of the hatchlings will be in the middle sizes of 4"-6" ALL at 5 months old in climate of TN. Most producer fish farms will then sort or grade these bass into $ size groups. Your ""fish guy"" probably bought this size class of fingerling bass from a large producer, or maybe but less likely, he grew them himself. Crowd all the hatchlings together in limited space with limited foods and most all will be the 2"-4" sizes at 5-12 months old. A low percentage of the more aggressive ones aka "jumpers" could easily be 8"-10 long".
Last edited by Bill Cody; 04/05/23 07:55 PM.
