Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking F1 Tiger Bass Not Growing As Expected

Lake8,

Your fish were setting the bar last Fall. The greatest climate adjusted growth I had yet to observe. So don't panic.


You need around 15 to 16 LMB to meet your goal in your 3/4 acre BOW. It depends on the survival of your original 75, but you probably have too many surviving to now. I don't like that 5 of the 6 culled thus far are females. Would like to see you picking hard on the males. Keep in mind that both males and females can exhibit high (and low) RW. So learn to sex them. Not perfectly. But if you are correct 90% of the time, that is good enough to skew the population sufficiently to put things in your favor. Use the straw method to identify sex. Your fish should be large enough to reliably sex. They need to be around 11 to 14 inches for this method. Do a search of "Practical Field Methods for Sexing Largemouth Bass". Read it thoroughly to understand the method. Whatever you do, (for time being), do not select LMB with red swollen papilla to cull. Those will be primarily female. There may also be females that will not be exhibiting that feature. If you think 50 survived, set a goal right now to cull 20 males over the next couple of weeks. Get set up to handle fish carefully. Maybe set up a table and a big yeti ice chest (as a live well) and handle with care. But work hard to catch as many as you can. Sex them using the broom straw method. If one sexes male. Filet it and see if you correctly identified the sex. If you did, then you are on the right track. Kill each male you catch. If you do this, please report your findings as I think many will gain from this experience.

If it sexes female, consider marking it uniquely. Some members have been tagging, and if you plan on doing that, tag the fish that you have identified as female. A work around to tagging is to uniquely clip 1 or more of the 9 dorsal spines. When clipping a spine, just clip the upper 1/3 of it. That unique clipping can tell you who she is and you can track her growth. If we have dates and weights, we can track how she is performing adjusted for climate and also track how individual fish are tracking relative to each other by understanding their growth relative to the climate model bench mark.

You live in the South and your fish are trying grow at amazing rates. They will do that, provided there is enough forage. But this fast growth necessarily means that you have to be on the fast track in terms of anticipating population adjustments. You can reach your goal in 3 years where someone in Minnesota will take 6 years. They are on a much faster track. Feel free to reach out by PM anytime.