For anyone with fish less than a year old and following this thread, I hope this continued updating helps you. I have certainly benefited from reading so I hope to pay some info forward too.


Did another quick check of the fish this morning. Just to refresh, the bass were F1 babies(2-3inches) back in October. Here's what I found today:

1.) best fish of the day was an 11-inch fish that had nice 'shoulders' and belly weight. Did not get a weight on the fish, but the eyeball test was screaming relative weight over 100%.
2.) two more fish came in at 9 inches but neither of them had the build as the 11-inch bass. They didn't look bad, but they weren't nearly as defined.
3.) picked up a 7 inch fish that looked skinny...not sure what his deal was but his tail was extremely beat up like a spawning fish would have. 7-inch spawner in hot Mississippi June? Not sure I'm buying that story, but I'm interested to hear from others.
4.) saw some bluegill fry in the shallow of shallows. These guys were TINY! I definitely know that I need more fine, complex structure for them to feed from and hide. New ponds just simply don't have the necessary weed growth. It's that fine line between need weeds/hate too many weeds that needs to be achieved for our situation. Our body of water has a lot of 3-4 foot water with a maximum depth of 8, so weeds is going to be an issue eventually I'm afraid.

I released all the fish since they're my stockers, but it sure would be interesting to have kept and cleaned one to inspect the bellies. I know my BG are spawning, but potentially my little babies are being eaten before they actually grow enough to be of max value. Time will tell. Just gotta be patient unfortunately.

Ephesians 2:10