Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking My big bass are disappearing 1 acre pond

I purchased a farm last year in NJ that contained a 30 year old 3/4 to 1 acre pond. The farmer told me there was a big fish kill 2 years ago from turnover. The pond was in bad shape the first year with lots of filamentous algae. I installed aerators, raked and treated the pond back to pretty decent shape. I noticed a decent amount of small 3” bass and bluegills but was unable to catch any bass so I stocked it with seventy five 12” to 14” bass and added 10,000 FHM. Fast forward to this spring and many of my bigger bass have disappeared. The fishing has been very tough compared to last year after the stocking.if I am lucky I will catch one 12” bass per day. However, I am seeing plenty of now 6” to 7” bass and some bluegills but the large bass I stocked seem to be far and few between. There is a blue heron a very large snapping
Turtle and we also did see a black mink one time in march running on the other side of the pond. No one else fishes the pond so it hasn’t been fished out by humans. I thought the bass were just not biting because there bellies were filled but I am starting to get very concerned. I wanted to add crawfish and golden shiners now but I am not sure what to do
My goal is to grow the largest bass possible. What should I do?

Welcome to the forum!

If the bass were taken from another body of water via angling, then they could still be there, but getting hook shy from getting caught a few times. If you are seeing 6"-7" bass, then the ones that you stocked pulled off a spawn last year (if you didn't stock any smaller bass).

If you want to grow the biggest bass possible in that BOW, then I'd try to limit the number of bass in there to 50 and not fish for the bigger ones at all for a few years. You will need to fish for the smaller ones, and start removing 20# of bass per year from the pond so they don't eat themselves out of house and home.

If you have underwater plants established, I would go ahead and add the crawfish and golden shiners.

Transplanted adult fish do not often do well. Lusk reports of 100 adult LMB placed in a strange BOW, roughly 50 will do poorly, 30 will do okay, and maybe 20 will thrive.

The 75 bass I stocked were not wild fish I caught, they all came from a local fish hatchery. The small 6” bass I’m seeing were not spawned from the hatchery fish. The little bass were already in the pond last year at the time of stocking and were all approximately 3” long at that time.

Might try to get some length and weight data on a half dozen fish or so. Confirming the relative weight of the existing fish might give a few additional clues as to what is going on.