TobyH,

A lot has changed since spring of this year at your pond. You mentioned above reducing your feeding and something with regard to aeration. Please give more detail.

How many bags of what brand/product of feed did you feed last year?

How much this year?

Did you initiate aeration this year?

Do you know the initial stocking rate of your LMB?

Do you have a good census of your LMB? I know that you have been clipping some of them. How many have been clipped?

How well have the LMB done at recruiting?

The short answer to your question about too many fish. BG? Yes, too many for your goals. LMB probably too few. While I agree that you need to remove some larger LMB, if it is very many of them, you really need to be sure that you have recruits in place to take their place. (I mean in the 10 to 12" lengths).


Theo posts pics of some amazing BG-RES hybrids. His recipe seems pretty simple. Remove all BG-RES > 5" and less than 10" with only a rare notable exception. In his 1/2 acre pond his predators only allow a little over 400 BG-RES to survive their first year of life. He catches around that many annually and removes them. Only a few make it to 10". Most of these are male and he allows them to grow out their life from there. I estimate that only around 12 make it to10" each year and that the standing weight of >10" BG is around 62 lbs in his 1/2 acre pond. I estimate that the 400 BG-RES that he is removing each year weigh between 120 and 160 lbs. The recipe is pretty simple when you think about it. 400 BG-RES recruit past the predators each year while around 12 10" trophy track BG-RES recruit past Theo. At the core of his strategy ... persistent harvest of 2-4 year old BG-RES. He grows BG-RES at very near maximum annual potential and some have grown to be in the neighborhood of 8-10 years of age above 2.5 lbs. This is an example of what works to grow some trophies that make annual increments near their maximum potential throughout their life.

Persistent harvest of 2 to 4 year old BG and only a very limited number of 5+ year olds is a recipe for success. IIRC, you already have many BG over 10" and definitely many over 8". IIRC you added a group of stock sized BG hoping to get CNBG. There's a lot that need to be removed. You mentioned lowering the feed rate. You need to remove at the very least as much weight as that reduced feed would have supported ... Or many of your nice BG will die of natural causes and decline as they merge with the new reality.

It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so - Will Rogers