Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Couple questions about a pond we have recently bought

Hey everyone,

We bought a new farm last week that has 5 ponds on it. So far we have fished two of the ponds. In one pond we didn't catch any fish at all. The other pond is probably close to an acre(maybe a little more but I haven't measured it yet). We bass fished last weekend and managed to catch several bass. All but one were less than 1 lb. (mostly in the 8-10" range). Today I took the boys out there with some crickets and in probably 20 minutes time they caught 25-30 brim. Most of the brim were so large that I couldn't hardly get my hand around them. The owner of this place told me that the ponds haven't been fished in over 3 years. If I wanted to create an atmosphere that is better at growing big bass then what would need to be done? I am guessing that the big bream need to be harvested and I probably need to put a couple of feeders out there but I was wondering if there were any other ideas that I should try to do? Any advice would be really appreciated.

Small bass, large bream, both signs of being bass heavy. Harvest all the bass you can until you see the size go up and then set a slot size which you harvest, such as all bass 11- 14 inches. Feeding the bream would help but the problem is not the current bream.

lee as mentioned by Bill both signs point to bass heavy. DO NOT HARVEST THE BIG BREAM! they are big b/c you have few of them that is the worst thing you cn do, atl least their offspring are providing forage for the bass. If you have 5 ponds manage each a little dif. Pickout the biggest one for better bass growth. Only so many big bass in a pond around an acre. If you want better grwoth from the bass in this pond then start harvest of bass less than 12 inches. Rough guess but remove up to 50 of those 1/2 bass this year priro to doing anyother management efforts. Do you still have the other ponds?

IMHO, your big sunfish are factories for free forage. I'd definitely leave them alone. Did you read Dave Willis' pond quiz a couple of issues back? It's very interesting and relevant to your situation. Bass are notorious for their ability to overpopulate, and you as an angler can have a significant impact on bass size structure in a pond this size, especially if you've got boys helping you.

I must have been thinking wrong. I thought that I read somewhere in pondboss or on here that said you will pretty much either have big bream or big bass......not both. For that reason I thought maybe I had too many brim and not enough bass. Maybe in a year or so we'll go in and try to shock a couple of the ponds. I have alot of pond work to do. This one pond in particular has alot of trees growing along the damn, the outer edges are very shallow, and there appears to be no underwater structure. So for this one pond I am going to clean up the damn, take a track hoe and dig out the edges where I can get to it easily, and then I am hoping to put some structure out in the water. I'm looking for a small pond boat that I can do some of that with and still be able to move it from pond to pond rather easily.

The other ponds have some work to do as well......I just have to do one project at a time. For now the ponds have taken a back seat until I can get the fences mended, trails made with the dozer to get access to all of the places that I want and all of equipment moved etc.......There is alot to moving to a new farm. I never realized I had so much junk but I wouldn't have it any other way

Greg......I no longer have access to the farm that we had the 7.5 acre lake on. I actually prefer this place more.


Thanks again guys. From here out I will start keeping every bass under say 12" and then we'll see how that works out. I'll also try to start feeding in a month or so when I get a little time to get them fixed/setup.

Here is a pic of the largest bass we have caught out there so far:





Most of the others were much smaller than this one.

My son caught this one today.....it is a little larger than the avg fish that we caught last weekend. Sorry about the picture of the fish but I didn't think about taking an upclose pic until I got halfway home

They look stunted from being bass crowded/heavy. Lots of info on the forum on how to deal with that. Heads and bodies don't match and eyes are large and they are skinny. It is a fixable situation with culling LMB this summer and adding some 3-5in. BG/RES this fall.

Put a copy of that last pic somewhere safe where you can find it in a few years. Priceless moment.