Originally posted by Jack_Flash1949:
The pond has quiet a few LARGE channel cats. My wife caught one over 10 lbs.
The biologist says that the pond can support only so many big fish. He recommended removing the 12-13" bass that I've been catching. It seems to me that maybe I should remove the large catfish instead.
What do you guys think?
My pond is one-half acre. Two years ago we had at least a dozen really large catfish (10-15 lbs), and probably that many medium size (5-10 lbs) catfish. My bass were stunted and very skinny. My bluegill were reasonable.
Over the past year, we got all the catfish out of the pond, and two of four really large grass carp. Both types ate a lot of food when we fed, plus I can only imagine that the big cats were eating a lot of other forage that should have fed the bass. My pond was muddy most of the time, so I did't get much of a bloom at any time.
By this spring, even my 9-11 inch bass began to fatten up. In early May, we took out 11 bass between 9-10 inches because there were so many of that size in the pond. Right now I have a real abundance of 12-13 inch bass that resemble 1959 Nash Ramblers.
We consistently catch 9-11 inch male bluegill, and 8-9 inch female bluegill. Since about mid-April, we've caught 126 bluegill over 8-inches, keeping 48. Of the 126, 32 were 10 inches or bigger.
I don't think any of this would have happened if we would have left the big cats in the pond.
Good fisn'
Ken
