Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Thoughts please... pond management weekend bass derby-

I have a 10 acre impoundment in north central Kentucky. It has fairly heavy vegitation covering about four acres which vary from 3-4 feet in depth, the rest of the pond is anywhere from 6-20 feet deep. It's lightly fished and is about 10 years of age.

It produces loads of lmb in the 12-15 inch range with few fish 3+ pounds. Five years ago I'd average 3lb bass. I'd like for the pond to produce more fish in that range so I'm having some buddies out this weekend and we're going to hammer a slot of 12-15 inch fish. HOWEVER the pond also produces monster bg and some GS also found their way into the water years ago but they've been bred down in numbers since. So my question is to get the lmb back to the level I'd like to see them attain should I also hammer the bg and if so I figure I need to take out 4-5 pounds for every lb of lmb that I remove. That seems like a hell of a lot of fish. I've got the guys coming out on the pretense of catching lots of lmb but I've been thinking that that could cause me a bluegill problem...

Thoughts?

From what the general forum consensus shows, I think you want to remove all the slot limit LMB, while not removing any bluegill if the goal is larger LMB.

Well from what I gather large bg prey on the same baitfish as lmb. If that is the case I'd need to remove some of the larger bg, no?

Not so ! The old studies that say take out 10 lbs of BG for every lb of LMB are not followed much any more. More recent studies on BG show that doing so in ponds often has negative consequences on the BG size structure and available food for LMB.

The more recent information stresses the need to assess the populations to determine how many and what size of fish to remove. There are a # of ways to gather the data and manage the fish. I would not recommend taking out many adult BG without that assessment data first. Based on the info you provided I would guess that you have to many LMB in the 10-12 in range and to few large spawning adult BG to provide enough small BG (3-4in.) to feed all the bass. Big BG do not to any notable extent compete with LMB over 8 in. If you lose some 4-8 in LMB due to competition between them an large BG that would in my opinion be a plus.

I would suggest that you use the LMB catch data from the weekend help to help assess the situation. Keep #s, sizes (lenght & weight) and condition notes and pics.

I'll post the results with pics in this thread in the next couple of days. Thanks!