Hi all, I'm Nick and live in central Louisiana. I bought a new home in May of '22 and with it a 1.5 acre pond. The pond was neglected for a number of years and the LMB population exploded. My first time fishing the pond I caught 10 bass is as many minutes and each one was roughly 11". It was fun and my kids loved it, but I figured it was indicative of an unbalanced pond. Since then every fishing trip has yielded the same class of fish.
That first summer I did not observe a BG spawn anywhere on the shoreline. That is when I began harvesting LMB. We have harvested about 40 pounds of bass. Shortly after that initial harvest I added about 75 adult BG and Chinquapin (Red Ear) from a local lake. Our second summer I observed at least three BG colonies, each consisting of about 30 beds.
The LMB have become difficult to catch. Unsure if it was because of numbers or pressure, I began fishing shiners because I wanted to assess the population. Each trip yields 1 or 2 fish on shiners and they are in that same 11 inch class. My understanding is that it is unlikely that a stunted bass population will resume desirable growth, so that hasn't really been a surprise to me.
My plan now is to begin sinking cover and feeding my BG. I'm planning to buy a few hundred pellet trained fish in the next couple of weeks to serve as teacher fish. I'm also throwing a cast net in an attempt to survey the population. My first few casts have me a little concerned because the BG I caught were about 4 inches. It seems unlikely that both populations would become stunted, right? That is likely an overreaction because it was 3 fish from the same area on only 4 casts.
Feel free to tell me what I've done wrong or how you think I should proceed. I'm excited to join the conversation!
