Originally Posted by JE Craig
As I try to bring my pond (3 acres & 40 y/o)back into balance, I made the assumption that the greatest number of healthy >9" male & female BG would produce the most forage fish. Big BG males defend the spawning bed & establish the best areas to spawn. Big females produce the most eggs per female. The more healthy large BG the more fry produced to grow into the most forage fish.

I have reduced the number of skinny LMB so that the fish/hour is .16. I now see more smaller BG <6" but still not the numbers I would expect in a balanced BG population. Most of the BG caught & observed are >8".

From what I have gleaned from your summary, I should now reduce the numbers of the large BG so that the smaller brooders can do their thing & quickly increase the numbers of smaller forage fish as the .5 lb fish are the most productive? While I can't get to that ideal level of 20 lbs/acre of smaller brooders a reduction of the larger >9" would be helpful?

A few things. I did not mean that you should have only 20 lb/acre of brooders. That would be unbalanced for BG fishing. For acceptable BG fishing and good LMB growth into preferred and larger sizes, the nonconsumable BG biomass should be no less than 50% of the total BG biomass AND the total BG biomass should be in the neighborhood of 50% of water's potential to carry BG. Best balance is in the middle of the extremes.

I don't think the size of your brooders is as important as the total biomass. If they are at least 1/2 lb average weight then they can be better relied on to spawn. They need to be in good condition.

IIRC, you have many types of fish competing for space in your community pond. Not just BG and LMB but many other fish like bowfin, tilapia, gar?, bullhead, carp?. I am trying to remember.

An example of good balance for trophy LMB is a distribution of standing weights as depicted below for 600 lb/acre potential. 62 % of the biomass is BG, ~ 1/2 of that is consumable and about 3 times the LMB biomass is consumable.

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BalanceBigBass Pond.jpg

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