Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Fall Harvest - Largemouth Bass

I'm curious.

Could more growth occur for pre-adult vs adult given the same amount of food? Young fish are devoting 100% of the food they capture to maintenance and growth vs adult fish are in maintenance, growth, reproduction....

Could the growth be seen as proportionate to size? The gains and the speed at which young fish seem to make gains is pretty incredible. 0 year fish went from 2-3" to nearly 11" in the first growing season. In the second growing season they have gone from 11" to 14"+. These are generic measurements, not all the fish have grown at the same rate.

The percentage gains seem different between the two to me as well. I don't know what a 2-3" LMB weighs but from 0 to 12-14 ounces in a growing season is yuge. 12-14 ounces to just over 2lbs is pretty really nice too but the ratios seem to favor 1st growing season on growth.

Yes to all of what you asked.

With regard to the question:


It's not best constrained that way. One take on that concept is to constrain on consumption. That was my original approach. But there are significant problems in the early stages with that approach. There are really two stages of growth. Geometric growth of sexually immature fish and the consistent annual growth of sexually mature fish (> 9"). I model both.

FWIW, the first year is less important than subsequent year's. What makes trophies are consistent gains year after year. Where it gets really tough is 3 or 4 years down the road.

As far as I know, a 2 lb Female LMB can make 1.67 lbs of growth in 1 year in your climate and a 5 lb LMB can do the same. But for the 5 lb LMB it is only a 33% gain while for the 2 lb LMB it is an 83% gain. The consumption for the 2 lb LMB making that increment is a higher proportion of its initial starting weight than is the consumption of a 5 lb LMB making the same increment. Throughout life, an LMB's potential for proportionate gain declines even though it's potential for annual weight gain remains fairly constant.

jpsdad - I do still agree with this and your statement of : Bill, numerous times you have advised us that LMB in your climate should average/make 1 lbs weight increments each year if there is sufficient forage. Do you no longer believe that?

I still believe that 1lb gain for LMB per year and at times more is possible when eating to satiation. My thinking of less weight gain of 1 lb/yr per year was possible as the bass grew larger than 5 lbs was poor thinking on my part and based on guess work and based on lack of the actual facts. Thanks for helping to improve my thinking about this topic. But on the positive side, my erroneous information did stimulate discussion to point out that there is better information about bass feeding weight gain and their optimum ability for growth rate.

If I may offer a few facts about growth I have had over the summer. I caught a tagged bass this weekend (10/3/25) that weighted in at 2lbs 7oz, length 15.5 inches. I tagged this fish 3/29/25 it was 1.0 lb, 12.5 inches. I caught it again 5/2/25 it was still 1.0 lb and 13 inches. So in about 6 months this fish more than doubled it's body weight. I have caught several other bass that were over 2.5 lbs and one that weighed in at 3lbs 8oz, so it seems like my fish have made significant gains over the summer, which was fairly mild for us this summer. I also run aerators at night during the summer and pump water in from a well, due to a leaking pond. I don't know if that kept temperatures down in the pond or not. I also added more structure, more forage fish and seemed to have really good bluegill spawns.

I like your bass growth rate.

I also like your bass aggressiveness that you can catch the same fish three times over a relatively short period!

Lake 8,

If feeding to satiation, the 3.5 lb LMB you caught on 8/23/25 would be closing in on 4 lbs today. That is 1 year, 3 months, and 4 days from stocking at 1.5" (less than 1 gram).

Thanks for that, great info as always. I have been trying to catch that ole girl again. She might have wised up to the hook. I switch up baits a fair amount to keep them guessing. One thing I can tell you is that in a small pond, the more natural colors and smaller presentation baits are the key. My bass right now don't want anything to do with a larger crankbait, like a 2.5 or larger swim baits 4 inches and up. Throw a 3 inch strike king swimming minnow or a ultra light crankbait and they are money. So, I would have to assume the bass are gorging themselves on newly hatched bluegill and minnows. I only fish with ultralight rods, so these girls are always fun to catch.

Totally love your comment. Given your success, I suspect there may be something we as community could learn from it. Although I have followed the growth of your LMB closely, I have not noted the details employed in terms of initial stocking of forage and forage supplementations.

With regard to the small size of lures ... I would agree that you are matching the hatch. Forage of comparable size is what they are eating. Regardless of what anyone may believe is most optimum, YOUR LMB seem to growing near the max limits of growth for your climate on forage less than 1/5 the length of your LMB.

Sometime ago, I posted on a paper called something like "Go big or small?". But in this paper, the authors assemble years of data from multiple state DOWs for consumption of prey by various predators. I personally suspected a connection between their consumption frequency curves and the profitability curve of optimum foraging theory. In their findings, the most often consumed prey (laterally compressed prey like BG) of LMB are about 18.5% the length of the predator. I asked myself, does it make sense that LMB would consume the most profitable prey most frequently? To me, this made alot of sense. On the other hand, I asked myself, does it make sense that LMB would consume the least profitable prey most frequently? To me, this made no sense at all. But what really makes sense to me is that LMB consume more frequently the most profitable prey that are available to them.

For what its worth, for your BIG girl who is now around 17.125" in length, a little larger lure could be more attractive. So I am suggesting that as your LMB have grown the size of the optimum lure may have grown a little too. For a 17" LMB, I estimate the optimum length of BG to be just a wee bit over 3" and for a GSH ... right at 4". I don't know if they make Strike King swimming minnows in 4" lengths ... but this may be more attractive for the BIG GIRL and less attractive to the smaller LMB she has outgrown.

I know I kind of hi-jacked this thread and am sorry about that. But I do intend to harvest a few more smaller bass this fall, especially the ones from an unexpected spawn of first year bass. Which was the subject of the thread.

I know that my bass will not continue to grow at the rate they are growing now, but it sure is fun being able to see results of all the hard work, time and money I have invested in this project that has been a passion of mine for quite some time.


To answer your question about initial stocking. I stocked FHM and 1"-2" bluegill in February of 2024 and added some larger bluegill (4"-6") harvested from a local pond (about 60 of those). I fertilized the pond using Pefect Pond Plus to achieve a good green tinted water. I started feeding them Optimal bluegill feed pretty aggressively soon after, and upped feeding amounts and time as the bluegill grew. I added 75 F1 Tiger Bass from American Sportfish on July 3, 2024, they were 1"-2" each. I added GSH several times that fall. I culled about 20 bass in late winter, early spring of 2025 and added more GSH and more structure. And they thrived after that.

A gem to keep as we all move forward - "But what really makes sense to me is that LMB consume more frequently the most profitable prey that are available to them."

FYI this LMB was stocked at 10-12 inches (appx 9 mths old) and in 18 mths grew to 10 lbs. No small LMB stocked. 12 acres 197 LMB ( 47 Fla ,100 North and 50 F-1)- into a large base of BG/RES ,shad, and FH with supp feeding. Several mths later an extensive ES survey with DNA analysis was performed. There were a bunch of 5 lb LMB but not another one like this. Sample size was about 10%. Was this fish smarter, or lucky. There were other LMB with the same genetics. Growth is an enigma.

I think every fish has limited potential to grow. Each has its own limitations. Some more limited than others. I estimate that Lake8's best fish so far at least has the potential to grow 3.3 lbs annually. So, if it were instead 10" on May 1st, 2025, it could potential make >7 lbs by 11-1-2026. Being 4 lbs today, it has the potential of being in excess of 7.3 lbs 10-7-2026. This is fastest growth I have yet to see posted by a Pond Boss Member. BUT ... I would also concede that even this fish might have grown better. IOWs, it may not have consumed as much as it could have ... it may not have been satiated all the time. Lake8's best fish exceed the average estimated of the model. His averages - limited in number of samples - have set the model. That said, there has been good agreement when compared to others growing F1s during the first 18 months. It's pretty good growth and he now has multiple fish exceeding 3 lbs. The one he posted above ... might actually be male. At the very best, it seems to be one of the slower growing females.

For me, the model provides a limit to what I should expect of a population of female LMB when all is well. I would want to manage for that maximum average as opposed for the outlier that may or may not be present. To gain a good sense of growth, one really needs to understand what the population is doing and how the population is growing. One needs to understand the population density and the biomass. Within these metrics are the calculable forage consumption requirements. The biomass and the average growth are going to balance with this consumption. This consumption is a reflection of forage production. IMHO, the example above is just like that. If we were to look at the entire population what we would find is that the growth and biomass of LMB was in balance with a reasonable expectation of forage production. We shouldn't take 1 fish and project its seemingly unlimited growth as a metaphor for the entire population. In the end, biomass will balance with consumable forage production and the whole population will reflect that.

You asked:


I love this question. Could well be smarter, lucky, or even something else. Part of the profitability of prey is the success that LMB have in consuming varying sizes of prey. Small prey are easy whilst bigger prey is more difficult. This is countered by the fact that smaller prey contains less energy than bigger prey. These two relationships maximize the energy gained per pursuit (predatory attempt or whatever one wants to call it) somewhere between the maximum size (defined by gape) and a minimum size that would prompt a pursuit. Its a curve with a bump somewhere in the middle.

So yes, a smarter fish might have a greater success rate or be able to consume more frequently larger prey sizes. Perhaps both. If a fish had just a small advantage, it could grow faster than peers. Even if the difference is small, COMPOUNDED these can lead to remarkable differences in growth over a period of 18 months (especially if including 2 growing seasons).

Luck? Why the heck not? By my best reckoning, the optimum prey has a 42% probably of being consumed in a pursuit. Lets just call that 50-50. Its a coin flip so to speak. So if probability plays any role in success of pursuits, then there will be strings of success and strings of failures that for limited spans of time seem to violate the 50-50 rule. Just like flipping coins. These sequences can propel one fishes growth while hindering another's.

Another possibility is the variation of sizes of the initial stocking 10-12 inches doesn't seem like much variation but the difference is 81% by weight. I do model relative weight as THE variable affecting pursuit success so if the prey available was most optimum for 12" fish ... then they would have a distinct advantage over the 10" fish. Imagine also the potential outliers of the stocking. Sure, most were between 10" and 12", but is it not possible that there were 1 or 2 13" fish in there? If the prey available at the time of initial stocking significant favored a 13" LMB ... then this fish would have a strong competitive advantage.

Just throwing a few ideas around for the "odd girl out".

Anyways, one can't expect 197 LMB to grow like that one example did ... even if they were clones. How do I know that? Because I know how much forage it would take to balance that growth. That much forage will not be produced in situ ... it would require supplementation of forage. In the end, the population biomass will find balance with forage production (specifically that portion of forage production that is consumed).