Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Breeding in holding tanks

Having or producing clear water in terms of 8ft - 10 ft or more is affected by and results from numerous interconnected biological and chemical factors. Some of the ponds that I help manage have water clarity of 12 to 16ft. We can see the secchi disk on the bottom of these clear water ponds that mainly use the water as their main house water source. So I am very informed about this topic. My educational degree is in limnology and aquatic biology. Limnology is the freshwater equivalent of marine biology.

My discussion below is focused toward clear water for fish numbers as density, sizes present, what it takes to grow fish to medium and larger sizes, and how it all affects water clarity.


No. Growing the predators throughout the year means they always or almost always have an over abundant food supply. As bass poundage increases more organic food of one form or another is needed to feed them. Keeping more of them well fed as numbers or more fish weight adds Pond system enrichment. Organic foods contain added nutrients. Every day a predator does not eat means an empty bass belly and no growth. Ample food is needed for growth. When no growth is happening the fish is using fat and losing weight.

No.1 – having continual access to food heavily depends on the amount of biomass of predators present. Each one eats and sometimes eats a LOT depending on the size of the fish and time of year. As they grow they need more food daily. Here are several examples.

Bob Lusk wrote about this. Some of the next few paragraphs are repetitive for better understanding and learning and to emphasize what it takes regarding the amount of food it takes to grow good or high quality predator fish in a pond. Predator fish can eat more food than most all pond owners think.
Lusk says - Recent research suggests that largemouth bass, under optimal conditions, are capable of consuming as much as 5 percent of their body weight DAILY. 5% do the math. That means a 5-pound bass, feeding at maximum efficiency, will consume a quarter pound per day ... nearly 2 pounds per week... over 50 pounds during a normal growing season (March-October). And that's 10 times its body weight, just during the growing season!! Let's assume that the typical pond has roughly 125 pounds per acre of largemouth bass, ranging in size from juveniles to mature adults. Given this model, these individuals would consume as much as six-plus pounds of forage PER DAY... over 40 pounds in a week ... and more than 1,300 pounds/acre in a growing season. This is for just one acre.

Cody note - clear water of 8ft-10ft normally does not / cannot grow this type or amount of food for numerous bass per acre. I advise you do homework and know how much food (fish crop) your pond with its water clarity and fertility (nutrient content) can grow. Farmers know this, those wanting to grow fish should know this. I mention some of this info on productivity in my previous long post.
Each 2 lb bass(15”-16”) can consume 24 lb of food per year. Six 2 lb LMB per acre will eat 144 lb of live food per year Mar-Oct. Then six 3 lb LMB/ac can eat 216 lb of live food/yr. Clear 8-10ft low fertility water is not able to grow this much good sized bass edible foods per year and STILL have enough breeders remaining to spawn and produce enough food for the new growing season especially if there are numerous young predators(LMB) coming up into the population.
All water, as does land, has limits for growing crops, both all based on fertility present. Be reasonable when stocking fish based on fishery science and ones goals for pond management. Know how much forage is grown or produced to adequately feed how many “hogs” are present to eat it. Homework, Homework, Homework.
Management, management.

Also see similar info from our PB growing big bass archive topic.
As esshup mentions - Medium 15”-17” bass eating mainly small minnows will not grow much larger because these bass expend too much energy and effort catching enough of the too small of fish who do not provide enough needed nutrition for growth. Maintenance weight maybe - Growth = little or None; especially when the bass grows to big sizes when feeding efficiency becomes more useful to the bass. Example – A single 2lb bass (15”) needs to eat 12 lbs of food PER year to JUST maintain it’s 2lb weight. This is called Maintenance Weight. Predators need to be at a Maintenance Weight so it is then able to add more body weight. AND then to grow an additional 1 pound from 2lb to 3lb it needs to eat another 10 lbs of the right sized forage. So for just that one 2 lber to grow to 3 lb (from 15” to 17.5”) it needs to eat a TOTAL of 22-24 lbs of food that year! So 30 of these 2lb bass in 1 acre or spread them out into 2 acres need to eat at least 660 lbs of forage fish! Do you see why a CONSTANT supply of forage amounts are very important and especially true when lots of bass per acre are present?


Comment – This can happen. BG or many other species can sustain a pond, PROVIDING the numbers of predators that are present and their total weight matches or is in some sort of balance with the amount of forage food present or is being produced. The successful trick for this scenario is to not have too many predators who are not getting enough food. One bass just one or one predator living in a pond with just fathead minnows or mosquito fish will be a pretty “satisfied” bass. I have seen this happen. The more predators that have to share the pond’s forage weight, the less each bass gets to eat. Not enough food equals skinny or thin body fish that are not growing well. Adequate foods allows the fish to stay a Maintenance Weight so eating more food allows for growth. The predator has to be a Maintenance Weight in increase body length. For fish - body weight as fat and some muscle mass not length is what is lost when the fish is not getting enough to eat.

The relative weight (RW), as a measure of body condition, is a good indicator for measuring or determining if the predator/s are getting enough food that results in good body condition. RW compares a fish’s body weight with a universal Standard Weight (SW) for that specie. Low RW means not enough forage food. High RW ample forage is present and keeping that fish at Maintenance Weight so it can grow. The less food a fish eats the less fat in the fish. Fat or plump fish are in balance with the food sources which is a good reason for measuring and monitoring the RW of the predators. Lower RW = lack of forage.

Back to our examples of feeding bass. I will use just 30 bass instead of an often suggested stocking of 50 or 100 bass per acre.
If 30 bass get to 4lb, EACH ONE needs to eat 24lb of forage to maintain its weight and then an added 10 lb more lb of forage for a total 34lb for each bass to grow from the 4 lb to that 5 lb weight. A 1 ac pond then needs 1024 POUNDS of CORRECT forage to get 30 4lb bass to grow to 5 lb. Plus then,,,, how much are all the other smaller bass going to eat? See the challenge of properly feeding a pond full of bass?
Example - for a 5 lb bass just to maintain a good, well fed high maintenance body weight as a high relative weight (RW) for allowing more growth,,,, it needs to eat close to 30 lbs of fish per year AND then to grow from 5 lb to 6 lb it needs to eat another additional 10 lbs of food for a total of 40 total lbs of fish eaten for just that year for just that one bass. That amounts to a lot of small fish for feeding just 30 bigger bass. It is very good to know how much food your pond will produce then figure out how many of what size healthy predators it will support.

This is why when bigger the bass are in a pond, the fewer of them that can co-exist, stay healthy, and get enough of the RIGHT food to maintain their weight and continue growing due to the limits of a pond’s carrying capacity and its forage basis. It takes lots and lots of food if you want your predators growing each year. My answer is for predators not growing properly is to reduce the numbers of hogs feeding at the trough. This reduction of numbers can be size selective and it is often referred to as a “slot” or slot size harvest.

Continual access to food depends heavily on the sizes and numbers of fish present as Bob and esshup mentioned above. The more fish poundage there is in a water body, usually the less clear the average clarity of the water is,,,,,,, mainly because it takes an additional amount of fertility AND food so all have prey and predator/s have adequate food to properly feed or “sustain” the fishery system. Lots of fish - eating lots of food produces lots of manure. Manure feeds the system. Thus the annual stocking of more forage is a common practice to keep all the hogs growing.

Adding more foods increases the fertility of the entire system and eventually reduces water clarity. Big fish usually ignore small foods, but will eat them when preferred things are not present. We discuss this topic a lot on the forum topics. Big fish eating mostly small foods results in little or no added growth or weight especially true as that fish grows bigger. A predator catching more numbers of too small of foods causes excess expended energy chasing/catching it and little nutrition is left over for the best type of growth. More requires more.

You say – Fish produce manure from pellets and everything else they eat. The more food present /acre of any type that is being eaten by more fish results in more fertility that ultimately or eventually results in less water clarity. It is all relative to the biomass and carrying capacity. In addition to human food inputs as pellets and or routine added forage items, Mother Nature also has numerous ways to add nutrient containing allochthonous materials to water bodies, defined as all types of organic matter and nutrients that enter an ecosystem from outside the water body. This is a key concept in ecology and a basic fact of limnology. Thus any type of food or organics regardless of the origin added to the system does NOT reduce the “carrying power”. Added nutrients of any type always ‘feed’ and enrich the system to increase the “carrying power”.
Any added food has nutrient content, added nutrient content makes the water body more fertile as with more mainly nitrogen and phosphorus to grow or have more “carrying power”. Nature’s law of eutrophication - not mine.

I know about the Ohio strip mine ponds. After filling with seepage or rain water many of them had clear water due to low or very nutrient content of the input waters. Not much was available to feed the plankton, thus very little plankton and low productivity usually resulted for those type of ‘ponds’ to bolster the food chain, thus the result was clear water. Whatever nutrients that were present were enough to grow the FEW fish that had been stocked. The resulting balance of fish and amount of fish had a lot to do with what fish that were stocked. Again clear water can grow big fish but not as much fish biomass as waters with more plankton that causes less clarity. You will learn a lot more about this concept as you spend more years managing your ponds.

Stories of big fish from these clear strip mine waters were likely pretty true. Hype was no doubt also involved. However realistically, there were not lots of these big fish present per angler hour of fishing compared to the fish biomass catch density in more fertile waters. Usually in new properly stocked waters the initial fishery is always seen as “fabulous”. As the fishery ages usually the balance and sizes of the fishes change. That is normal,,, based on the conditions (habitat) present. You will also learn this as time passes with these/your ponds. The old fisheries in your current ponds reflect this concept of pond aging. New ‘great’ fisheries very often decline over time compared to the early years. IMO this is due to improper management because the nutrient content and POTENTIAL for producing more fish actually increases over time. The biggest fish are almost always produced in the first 5-10-15 years. This is mostly due to lack of competition for the first stocked fish – fewer hogs feeding at the trough. As reproduction and recruitment increases,,,,, MORE fish are then eating what foods are produced. Often the production is not enough to feed all the older and newly reproduced, surviving fish. New lakes with big bass usually always reflect this type of change in community structure over time. Big bass anglers usually know or hear about what new lake is currently “hot” for having big bass. Commonly - Years later the “hot” bass lake is no longer the “hot” lake it once was. IMO this is often because most of that fish biomass in distributed to more smaller fish not larger fish. Unbalanced.


Sometimes true. ALTHOUGH big fish CAN be consistently produced in these low fertility waters IF the fishery is managed and harvested PROPERLY by reducing the number of ‘hogs’ that need to eat. ‘Properly’ managed is the key word. Proper management is what each state’s DNR tries its best to achieve. Not an easy task. Angling pressure can be and is a very important part of proper fish management and the success of anglers.



This is one of the main reasons that I suggested to rebuild a few or all of your current ponds. With rebuilding several or all the ponds,,, you can designate a different type of fisheries in each one as big panfish, big predator, or mixed general fishing, a unique fish combination, and or one stocked and managed for your clear water goal. Each one that is renovated and stocked with something different can serve a different purpose in each pond. Variety. Each different fishery would need different management, and hopefully it would have or be proper management for the GOAL of that pond.

IMO all pond owners chase some type of dream. What Bob did not elaborate on or more fully explain is every fish specie is a fish with a different niche. Each fish specie has some sort of unique type of niche where they will 'do' best. This niche specialization is mainly what helps make them different. Note - He did not use in his Niche Article the Spotted Bass(SPB) as his niche fish example. He used HSB – hybrid striped bass. HSB have a very different niche compared to LMB and SPB. For a full PB suggested acronym list see:
https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92442#Post92442

IMO for growing larger bass or good size fish potential that allows or provides for your clear water goals in one of your ponds,,,, IMO use just the HSB as predator with its food source as pellet fed, or all natural forage or some feeding combination. However by adding food of any type, we now know this adds nutrients that results in growing more fish biomass which is why it is usually done. Adding any type of nutrients to the system has risks of reducing water clarity. It is the manager who determines the sizes and numbers of fish that comprise the pond’s fish biomass.

The main benefit for the HSB for your clear water pond goals compared to LMB or SPB is HSB will not reproduce so you can much better and more easily manage their numbers in the pond. Using primarily HSB allows for the easier “Top Down” type of management. The average sizes of HSB you prefer in the pond can be sizes of small, medium, big or a mixture of all 3. If you need some, you add some. Have too many harvest some. You can manage just HSB as predators easier than dealing each year with uncontrolled spawning and recruitment of LMB, SPB, or SMB who regularly recruit new individuals that require you to expend effort controlling the numbers. That is not always easy nor simple when the predators become "hook smart". This is a definite problem when ponds are fished too often.

The other BIG factor about Bob’s Niche story compared to your pond goals is his example niche pond had 30 acres not 2ac or 3ac. Bigger water ‘usually’ has more niche habitats. The Bob example pond was deep and steep sided with few niche types similar to that in a strip mine pit type of construction or basin shape; that had/has a large % of deep water and small noncomplex littoral zone. Both features are conducive for the potential of producing clear water. Stone quarries esp those with no stream input are often good examples of this type of construction; steep sides, little or no littoral zone, limited nutrients, limited habitat and clear water. Remember this basic info for your new pond. However, for dirt bottom ponds know about the best slopes to minimize bank sloughing. Another very important factor to produce clear water is the type of fishery stocked as those used or managed as “top down” stocking and management.

Quoting Bob Lusk -
I somewhat agree but not fully. IMO SMB can thrive very well in small ponds. I help manage SMB in numerous local OH ponds; all smaller than 1 ac and most are 0.2ac to 0.5ac. I have grown SMB to 6 lbs in my pond of 0.3 ac. It did take some management, but I would not consider it “work hard”. If you are interested in growing some SMB in your ponds you should read all my 5 articles from PondBoss magazine about growing SMB in ponds.
http://www.bassresource.com/fish_biology/smallmouth-pond-lusk.html

“Bucket” Stocking. One can bucket stock many species of fish into ponds. It can be done successfully, although one should know about and realize the risks involved to minimize potential long term problems. Disease and parasite transmission are the big factors. Numerous internal parasites are not externally visible. Almost every wild and pond fish has one specie or form of internal parasite. It is amazing of all the vectors present in freshwater fish. Fishes of Canada is a very good source for listing parasites and vectors of each specie of fish. Waterfowl are nature’s parasite main delivery method. The older a fish is the more chance it has been infected or is a carrier of a virus, bacteria, or parasite. IMO no water body is totally immune. There are numerous discussions here on the PB Forum for good, wise, and best methods for moving ‘wild’ fish into ponds. Remember - it is very, very easy to add a specie of fish into a pond,,,, but it is VERY difficult, almost impossible to remove all members of that specie from the pond when they are reproducing without renovating the entire pond. Once in,,,,, you are mostly stuck dealing with them. Many PB members here have experienced that problem. It is usually learned the hard way. Bob Lusk calls it the Dumb Tax. He wrote a PB magazine article about the “dumb tax”.


Aeration can always, when used properly, provide benefits to ponds. Improperly used it can cause problems. Good forms of aeration helps make “happy” water. It can usually improve pond conditions. Ponds by nature trend toward unhappy water very slowly or at an increased rate. It all depends.

Despite what some say on the ‘Web’, aeration does not remove nutrients and reverse eutrophication. Aeration can alter the balance of nutrients that results in changes. Removal of nutrients, not the binding of nutrients within the pond, is what reduces eutrophication. Binding of nutrients just delays nutrification. Bound nutrients are still present in some form usually as a sedimented layer. I tell clients - Ponds are nutrient collection basins; basically big tubs or toilets without a flusher unless the pond has flow through. Mother Nature’s goal is to fill that pond back up with nutrients, dead organics, debris and silt. Your older ponds are showing this process. It is called Aquatic Succession. Read more about it.


As you get further into developing your pond fisheries, there are also lots of good fish management informational points for you that you should occasionally reread in this and my earlier post/s of Dec 12 2024.
Fellow members on the PB Forum are here to provide advice and helpful pond management ideas or concepts. Do not hesitate to ask questions or for 2nd opinions for thought.