Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations I've got two small ponds and a plan...

Brian:

The focus on the TP pond is to get the forage base established, thriving and diversified size wise. Remember that bass need food to eat that are about 1/4 to 1/3 their body length to grow the fastest. Don't worry about stocking bigger bass in there at the moment, they will grow fast if given enough forage. A 2" bass stocked in May can be 2# by October if there is enough food for them in the pond. The key will be keeping the bass numbers down and NOT fishing for them because they will get hook shy quickly. So I would say wait until next Spring in April or May about a week before the full moon and catch a few female bass from the FP and ONLY stock female bass. no more than 15. Then don't fish for them and let them grow in there.

You will need approximately 1,700 sq. ft of cover for the fish in each of the ponds.... So the cover that you put in there is a good start. Spend your evenings reading about cover in ponds in the archives.

The FP will need bass that are smaller than 14". Any bass that is bigger than that? Remove it. I would feed the fish a good commercial fish food. Endurance Feed is what I recommend. Purina AquaMax is good too, but the fish may develop fatty livers on it and they might not live as long. You could see if you could buy some feed trained bass, fin clip them and put them in the FP. Grow them over the next year until they are sexually mature (14+" or so) and then transfer 15 females to the TP. If you stock both sex bass in the TP, then you will educate them fishing wise as you keep the excess bass harvested out. Then once the bass get to the trophy size you want, they will be hard to catch, and a lot of the forage food that you will grow in there will just be feeding bass that you are removing. To me that is a waste of forage fish.

How deep are the 1/5 ac ponds? Do they have electricity near them? Aerating the ponds if they are deeper than 6-7 feet will really help them hold and grow more fish, and you will need all the forage fish you can grow for the TP pond.

For the new pond that they are building, think about the fishery, create the bottom structure that should be there, and plan/build/place all the cover in the pond before it fills with water..... Maybe have fish species in that one that are different than the other 2 ponds.

Learn to tell the difference between male and female BG. Remove female BG from the FP pond.