Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Culling Measurements

Very good fish there TobyH. Great growth so far.

I've been reluctant to post ... perhaps others have as well ... but your goals will require careful attention to the details. The populations must be out of balance to achieve what you want. By this, I mean that you will have to artificially support by forage supplementation the large LMB that you plan to grow alongside your trophy bluegill. Also your trophy BG will have to be supported by feed because they will encounter competition with the supplemented forage.

That said, I think this is doable and you are on the right track limiting trophy track LMB to only 7. Here are where your challenges lie.

1. You need two distinct LMB populations. One numerous in number, slow growing, and small in stature. Another small in number, fast growing, large in stature. There needs to be enough separation between the sizes of the group of small LMB and the group of large LMB to allow you to supplement forage that only the big LMB will eat. I would recommend GSH for the supplemented forage.

2. Because the group of small LMB are growing slow AND because you need separation between the largest of the small sized group and the smallest of the large sized group ... it may not be practical to recruit LMB for the large sized group. For reliable recruitment, you may need to supplement 1.5 lb female LMB at the rate of 2 per year.

3. Because you will have abundant prey for large LMB and strong populations of large BG and GSH, overwinter recruitment of LMB YOY will be greatly diminished. Also, within 2 or 3 years, your LMB will be snacking on 6" LMB recruits which will be optimal sized prey for them. What I am saying, it may be a challenge to maintain the population of small LMB at numbers you need to control BG for a trophy BG pond.

So to maintain two distinct populations of LMB will be challenging. The path you are on, will likely favor LMB growth over BG growth. But ... if you can keep a population of say ... 80 to 100 LMB between the sizes of 8" and 11" ... AND ... if you will supplement 4" GSH at around 100 lbs each year ... then you might pull this off and do it indefinitely.

I am going to tell you up front. Nature will not cooperate ... you will have to manage recruitment ... and this may involve purchasing 8" recruits for your small sized population and 13-14" recruits for the large sized population. You must keep in mind, that the small population is not trying to remain small to serve your purpose of enacting crowd control on BG. They will grow and may grow faster than you would like ... meaning you will be forced to remove some. Nature is notorious for irregular recruitment and so Nature will not necessarily provide you replacements as you need them annually. Natural mortality will also diminish the crowd control of the population of small sized LMB. You will need to ensure that no more than 2 of them grow into 12" of length each year. If you can have stable recruitment to balance the managed and natural mortality, then I think your plan could work with supplemental feed and supplemental forage.

I noticed that you clipped the lower lobe of the caudal fin. So let that position be 2025. For 2026 let the upper lobe of the caudal fin be clipped, 2027 ... the lobe of the posterior dorsal, and let the lobe of the anal fin be for 2028. Clipping in this manner will tell you the year the trophy track fish was selected. Use the same clipping tool to clip the top 1/3 of a dorsal spine. Start with 3rd spine on the first fish you wish to uniquely identify. Then move on to the fourth for the next fish .... and so on. You have a 1 one acre pond and 7 fish on trophy track. An LMB has enough spines to uniquely identify all of them for 2025 and you won't need to tag them if you do this.