Ewest, thanks for the info. A significant difference in my pond and the Swingle experiment is that I have at least 80lbs LMB per acre compared to 200 fry. I seriously doubt that I have 280lbs of shad and I have been catching 9"-10" BG so my situation does not appear to be as bad as it was at the end of Swindle's experiment. I read the post that you linked to before I started this thread and reread Bill Cody's section, not because it wasn't well written, but because there was so much information. All the information I have read leads me to draining the pond unless I have 24" bass, which are very rare in Ohio. This is the third year since the pond was built and I would hate to drain it and start over. I have searched the site and have found some great info on why to and why not to stock gizzard shad but have yet to find an example of a Northern pond with a shad overpopulation problem. Open water is a fairly relative term. How big is the "open water" section of a 1/2 acre pond? It seems that the LMB utilize my entire pond so a HSB's open water preferences my be insignificant in my case and LMB would definetly be more capable of consuming larger shad.

This my be way off but...if the shad eat the food of the BG and LMB fry, wouldn't that give the larger LMB and BG less competition? Wouldn't the lack of food for the fry result in more small BG and therefore more small forage for the bass? Then lack of BG growth for forage would be supplemented by shad?



"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." Stephen W. Hawking