Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Questions about RW in different sized LMB

Thank you Bill. I appreciate your thoughts and advice. I got tied up yesterday but will try to answer before heading out.

This is not my pond. The pond is shared with many others and supplies far better LMB fishing than I would suspect given the fishing pressure it receives. I've never harvested LMB from it and I think this applies to practically everyone enjoying it. The limited surface area of course makes the pond very vulnerable to overharvest even if only one person were meat fishing.

The naiad is very problematic and I think a great deterrent to the growth of the existing population of BG as well where when it grows it greatly inhibits the food chain potential at the base. The BG fishing has declined as the naiad has worsened. Unfortunately, my only remedy is to rake what I can reach tossing a rake and pulling it back. Naiad isn't so much volume once removed from the water and I just put it in tidy place where it didn't interfere with mowing. The pond is small enough I think the effect was worth the effort.

I would like to influence the pond to grow larger BG. Presently, the population is predominantly 4.5"-6" in length with a few fish larger up to about 8". Almost all of those are male as females are all culled. I think that 4.5" lies just outside the limit of consumable prey. A similar situation is present in an adjacent pond that is about 3 times in surface area. Both are plagued with naiad and other than my recent efforts to reduce the predominate size of intermediate BG they are not harvested.

Bill, I know I need to reduce the number of larger LMB ... I just want to be sure I do not overdo that. The standing weight of >16" LMB exceeds 70 lbs acre and comprises a great majority of the LMB Biomass. I want to be cautious about removing them because I don't want to make such a dent that matters for the BG are made worse. IOWs I think as you mentioned above, the large LMB are consuming very large numbers of less than optimum prey. The maintenance for 70 lbs of LMB is around 350 lbs of BG annually. I think there are an insufficient number of smaller bass to take up the slack if all but one of the ~18" LMB are removed. For whatever I remove, I would like to see improved condition and growth of the smaller LMB and better LMB recruitment without seeing a substantial increase in the numbers of intermediate size BG that are too big for LMB to eat. I would like to remove just enough over three or four years to change the population to more but smaller LMB focusing on influencing the production of larger BG. Hopefully then the LMB exceeding 16" will number only 1 or 2 and the BG will be larger. I would like to be as aggressive as prudent but feel like that involves maybe 2 to 4 of those larger LMB annually. In a pond this small each of those bass is a substantial LBS/Acre.


I don't know how interested you might be in this but over the past year I have researched as much as I could find available on LMB energetics. One of the things I have learned is that specific consumption (consumption per unit weight of the predator) falls off with age. A 1 lb bass will consume 10 lbs of forage for each pound of its own weight in a year and will grow 1 lb. However, a 3 lb bass is just not inclined to consume at that specific consumption. If it could it would double in weight just like the 1lb bass doubled in weight (at 10 lbs of specific annual consumption). There are probably some LMB at 3 lbs that would consume 10 lbs of forage for each pound of its own weight. These would be exceptionally fast growers putting on 3 lbs in 1 year growing from 3 lbs to 6 lbs. When an LMB consumes at 10 specific consumption, the FCR is 10 lbs forage consumption per pound gained if the forage is BG. Other forages are more energy dense and the conversion is better. To gain 1 lb, A 3 lb bass must consume 20 lbs of BG forage and this corresponds to an FCR of 20 to 1. The gain actually comes from just 1.47 lbs of consumed forage where the rest consumed was just for maintenance. Keep in mind that a 4 lb LMB requires 20 lbs of forage for maintenance and that is all the fish consumed in that year. As it grew its daily maintenance needs increased. Now Swingle over 70 years ago proposed that the limit of standing weight was limited to maintenance and this ... based completely one energetics equations ... clearly demonstrates this principle. An LMB will grow into the maintenance provided by forage produced but no more. The standing weight of LMB in a pond ... if unharvested ... gives one very good estimate of the annual production of consumable prey.