Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Bass Seem a bit Skinny

My 1/2acre pond is 2 years old and was stocked with bass and bluegill/hybrid sunfish about 1.5 years ago. I have added 5-10lbs FHM 3 times over the last 2 years and I am feeding twice per day 3 seconds, all the food gets eaten within 3 minutes. Initially stocked with 75 LMB and 500 BG/HBG added 100 RES since. Any advice? Should I harvest, add more forage, feed more, etc?

With LMB the size shown in the pic you can add 5 in BG to help with forage reproduction. That size BG will spawn this summer. But be sure to habituate the BG at stocking to help with survival. Also remove LMB as suggested.

Like others have said, the Hybrid Bluegills were probably the reason for the small bass, due to their lack of reproduction. I believe they can only spawn with other BGs and GSF, but not themselves, so if you only stocked Hybrids, they're not spawning at all, and your Bass are starving. Golden Shiners might be worth it if you can get some bigger ones that won't get eaten immediately. Best bet, stock adult Bluegills, take out the skinny bass and maybe take out some of the Hybrid BGs as well (if your goal is to grow large bass - you don't need/want them). They're not supplying any forage for your bass.

Well, between your post and what ewest said, I'm really confused now lol. I could've swore I even heard Mr. Lusk on one of his videos state the HBG can only breed with their parental species and not each other. Or maybe its due to the fact that ~90% of HBG are males (or am I wrong about that, too?).

Either way, I think its an accurate statement to conclude that you don't want HBG as your main forage fish if you're trying to grow LMB. Also, when hybrids of any species reproduce, aren't their F2 offspring inferior to their F1 parents? And don't they continue to get more inferior as they create F3, F4, etc. offspring?


A 14-inch bass should weigh 1.5 pounds, so your 1.4 pounder is around 93% relative weight. Not skinny, but slightly underweight.

https://www.aces.edu/blog/topics/fi...easy-to-measure-index-of-fish-condition/

Steve_, the high proportion of males has a lot to do with lower reproduction. As to fertility and viability the literature isn't always in agreement. Fertility is the ability of crosses to produce gametes and engage in reproductive activities. Viability deals with whether those gametes can form viable unions that result in hatch fry that can grow up. As far as I know, all lepomis first generation crosses highly proportioned to be fertile and viable. They sometimes do not succeed in attracting mates with parental species. Some work and some researchers challenge even hybrid vigor ... but to be sure there is out depression and the offspring of lepomis Fx can be an odd lot.

I have read that although the F1 generation can generally cross and backcross ... subsequent Fx have much lower fertility and viability rates which greatly affects reproduction. This is true of F1 backcrosses and F1 crosses with F1s. There is at least one F1 cross that produces completely infertile polyploid offspring (BG x PKS). It is thought that lower fertility and viability of Fx offspring provides barriers to genetic infusion between species of lepomis. In other words, it is widely thought that hybridization doesn't lead to new species or help to bring new genes into a species from another. Environment and genetic mutation are thought to contribute most to speciation.

Those look like regular Bluegills, but to be sure you need to get one in your hand and take a good clear picture of the side of the fish paying attention to it's cheek and the anal/dorsal fin posterior margins.