Jason,
You and the pond are in the early stages of the bass population growth phase. Initial growth of stocked LMB is always good with abundant forage until the first LMB offspring is big enough and they spawn and the growth of these offspring becomes young spawning size bass. This is when overcrowding and over eating the food base starts to be a problem and growth of the original stocker bass does what they call "hit the wall". . That is when LMB density becomes too high, many more hungry mouths to feed, relative weights decrease and growth rate starts to noticabley slow down. Then without significant cropping of the young underperforming bass the LMB weight gain rate and RW often tends to continue on the decline unless forage amounts can remain high. This is the critical time when significant thinning of the LMB herd becomes very important if bass greater than 5 - 6 lbs are the goal.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 06/24/25 10:27 AM.
