Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Evaluating New Pond and New Fish

Very Good videos. They show well the current relative numbers, types and sizes of your forage fish. These vids will be very informative and helpful for you to compare and evaluate forage fish density as time passes and the fishery ages. jpsdad with his adept fish modeling efforts has indicated your current forage fish community is currently very adequate that has produced the excellent sizes and RWs of 8 month old LMB that you now have.

IMO the first most common main decrease in forage numbers will be about 8-16 months after the first LMB spawn. Then these new bass with their parents will be eliminating the remaining FHM adults and then start working heavily consuming the young GSH and small edible sizes of BG to obtain their high RWs when optimum forage numbers and small fish sizes are still abundant .

After the first and second LMB spawns have aged to 1 and 2 years is when to watch and compare the examples of 2024 forage amount videos with your early fall videos made in 2026 and 2027. These comparisons will provide a good indication of the status and relative abundance of the forage community. Ideally you want the forage fish community in future years to always be somewhat similar as shown in your current videos minus the FHM. It is the VERY rare pond habitat and fishery balance that can always maintain a breeding population of the same size and type of fishes that the fathead minnows now exhibit in your pond shallow areas.. IMO and experience this ability of always having a small true minnow specie/s abundance of forage fish composition is provided by very good habitat and a careful balance of predator species, their sizes, and their numbers that are present.