Thanks all. I’ll try to answer everything in one post…
A few constraints we are working with:
-People like to have a good chance to catch a fish -Clear water is desired by residents -There is a limited budget for any stocking -For any structure, it has to be where boats will not hit it and swimmers will not be at risk for injury (basically needs to be 15’+ deep -A feeder cannot be installed (limited budget and aesthetics). Besides, it would just be a turtle magnet anyway. -Any feeding is up to residents
For electroshocking, they did not specify how much cover / habitat – only to start adding it in there.
Yes, looks like there is a clumping of smaller bass for sure. Unfortunately last year we didn’t get to harvest that many small ones (folsk were busy) but we are jump starting on it now. Normally we have a fish fry in October and will make sure we get what we need for that in the form of bass and not bringing in extra stuff.
For cover, there are constraints – people swim and boat in the lake so we have to be mindful of that. Some folks (like me) have lots of stuff on their shoreline for little fish to hide in. Also many of the bulkheads in the lake have piles of rocks as support at the bottom and these always hold fish. There are ladders and other hiding places associated with bulkheads as well. Whenever I trim trees or have trees trimmed, the branches go in the lake. We also do a Christmas tree roundup and have probably put in close to 100 in there.
For pulling fish out, there is a compromise – not everyone is in it to have some high maintenance trophy lake. All but a few people are ok with just having some fish to catch. We have 125+ homes in the neighborhood with about half on the lake. If this was just my personal body of water, I would for sure pull a bunch of fish out but the average person is just trying to catch a fish.
For bluegill, anything over about 3” to 4” is rare to see close to shore. It seems as though all the larger bluegill are out deeper. We will see them using cameras and sometimes they will follow up crankbaits in 20’ of water. The adult tilapia and adult Texas cichlids will be up shallow along with their babies but not many of those over about 2” are seen close to shore. As far as targeting bluegill, I’m going to see if I can set a crab trap and see what gets in there in a few hours near a brush pile.
For the bluegill population in the electroshocking, they said we were light on them but with most of the pond being deep, it is hard to shock.
I will put some snippets from the original survey. It seems the idea was to get in structure / habitat to our liking, put some forage in the lake and maintain it by feeding. For the bass, let them be for a couple of years and then pull out no more than 10 small ones per acre. To combat the lack of aggressive feeding (as in a feeder), we have been pumping in forage every year instead of stopping and just feeding.
For fertilizing, that goes against the water clarity preference. All the streets in the neighborhood drain to the lake. So, fertilizer and all kinds of stuff make it in. I would think this fuels microorganisms some and will help out. Right now there is definitely a tint to the water.
As for how many bass per surface acre, I know it is way more than 4 or 5. My (and others) fear is if we truly did pull out say 500 bass, catch rates would go down and the average person wouldn’t be happy.
For feeding bluegill, residents generally only feed from their house using fish feed, dog food, old leftovers, bread, etc.
A few questions I had:
1. Can there be too many blue tilapia in the pond? Sometimes I’ll see 40 or 50 adult tilapia in the 2 to 6 pound class cruising around (yes, 6 pounds – we hold the Texas state record). 2. Bass that are removed – can their carcasses be ground up over an area holding bluegill and have them eat it versus just throwing in whole carcasses and having them compete with turtles? 3. Has anyone ever tried force feeding a bass? As in, one gets caught and put a couple of hunks of rib meat pieces in its mouth before releasing?
