CCp - It appears to me your pond is still in the stage of new fishery. Remind us of your goals of your fishery community.
If you are currently removing LMB to the goal of 200lb for 2026,,, why would want to add more adult LMB from another pond ecosystem?? Is it just to have some big bass? Adult fish in each unique fishery are and have "adapted" or accustomed to thriving and hopefully growing well in that specific relationship of prey - predator density. When those adult fish are removed and dumped into another balance of prey / predator the new fish have undergone undue stressors and then have to find a way to adjust to a different forage food balance. Remember the 'dumped' fish have been stressed of capture, transport, and release. The dumped fish also have to stay healthy in a new different water chemical, fungal and parasite balance as every pond has them and is different, sometimes quite different with having UNSEEN conditions of not being apparent. A few individual stressed and lucky fish will tolerate transfer better than MOST of the others when in the new competitive environment with different habitat conditions and community competition interactions. It is natural variability for the make-up of all species - survival of the fittest. Only the strongest and adaptable survive.
IMO the fish grown in your existing fishery will always thrive and grow better than any newly introduced adult fish. Your job as fishery manager is to closely monitor and do whatever is possible to maintain an abundant or over abundant forage food supply in the existing fishery for each of the intended goal/s. For growing LMB one cannot have too many proper forage foods if bass growth is a desired key component. One common sense way to do this is to monitor and keep the number of "hogs" at low density so the forage food community is ALWAYS thriving and is able to maintain itself as an abundant supply of food items. This keeps the higher level consumers growing the best they can grow. Annual growth rate always slows and can even stop when foods become limiting.
Know what the best growth rates are for each desired fish specie in your pond. When your chosen or targeted fish are not at those optimum growth rates you are NOT doing something correctly for growing those fish.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 03/06/26 02:05 PM.
