Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - 1.1 acre pond in middle tennesse

This land/lake was bought 1 year ago. Previous owner used it to duck and goose hunt in the winter. He said it was stocked with bass 7 years ago. We could not find any fish period. But it was and is full of frogs. So we killed the pond over a year ago and saw no fish.

In April I used pond perfect plus and treated it twice. Pond is 7.5 foot deep in center and 4 foot on shallow end well built, not much if any algae. It has thousands of tadpoles in it everywhere. Lots of frogs, has several wood ducks and couple of geese daily.

I had tremendous outcome with a 1/2 acre pond in mid 1990's that I stocked with 200 RES 100 BG and 50 LMB in stages. To this day it has 10-12 inch RES and BG and lots of 12-14 inch bass. I am a big fan of RES shellcracker are great to eat.

So I would like to have Big Bream and lots of Bass. Redear shellcracker have been hard to find this year here. Monday May 2 I stocked 10lbs of fat head minnows and 300 RES. Got them from fish wagon, they were to be 2-3 inches, but they were 1.5 to 2 inches. I was going to stock HBG and Coppernose until I started reading this forum. So stocking rest in June. Do I get 300 Copper nose ( by the way thank you pond boss didn't know what they were!) and another 100 RES? I want to stock 100 LMB as well, I was told to wait until october to stock the bass. My goal is big bream. I would like any input you guys have. Was just wondering since bass and copper nose 2-3 inches, if I could stock in June? I am fine doing it in stages it worked before, but I think RES are more of 50/50 stock if you want to have enough to catch, since they do not reproduce as much. I know I am new here but I would really like any help I can get, I want to do it right.

This is good news to my ears. I have RES around those sizes I stocked in April. I am hoping they and some of the bluegill will spawn this year. I wasn't planning on it and haven't seen any beds yet but this gives me hope at least. My FHMs have turned from thousands into what looks like millions now in that short of time.

Langster - What state are you in??
Okay GOALS are very important . if you are trying to grow trophy panfish as in CNBG & RES then you really need to stock more LMB not fewer. If it were my pond and BG & RES have spawned I would stock more than 100 LMB in 1.1ac, maybe up to 150/ac. To get best "BG" growth long term one needs heavy predation of always the current year class of panfish to keep their numbers low density so they always have plenty of excess food for optimum growth. Feeding pellets helps with maintaining abundant food, however too many BG without proper harvest results in less than an optimum trophy fishery. Too many fish and in limited water area with excess pellet feeding eventually results in decreased water quality and a less than optimum fishery.

Another option rather than 100+ LMB per acre would be to manually by trapping and or seining shallows to thin the current year class of sunfish in their first 1-2 years of life.

Once pond is stocked with bass, then it becomes your management task to properly harvest the "BG" crop to optimize "BG" growth in terms of long term rapid growth. Proper Harvest of BG involves best numbers to remove,,. best sizes to remove,, and focus harvest on removing a higher percentage of females compared to males. Bull male BG influence how well and how fast the younger males or each year class grow. It is a bullying affect of biggest males suppressing maturity of the young males that enables them to achieve the best growth rate.

See this lengthy discussion about growing the biggest and best BG from our Archives. IMO the information also applies to RES.
https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=286872#Post286872

You will not find better people and service than the folks at Optimal Fish Food. I ordered Optimal Jr. and got Optimal Bluegill. Which I was going to get some of that soon to mix with Optimal Jr. E-mailed them and ordered another bag of Optimal Jr. Within 30 minutes the owner of the company called me and offered me free replacement bag. I told him it was not a big deal because soon I was going to be ordering the Optimal Bluegill anyway. So I would just keep it and buy another bag of Optimal Jr.

Yesterday I got my Optimal Jr. and a nice Optimal hat and Optimal coaster. Not only is the product the best on the market but the customer service is awesome.

If there isn't enough cover in the pond for the LMB to hide in and ambush their prey, they will miss a lot of attacks. Like you trying to sneak up on a whitetail in a picked rice or corn field with a bow. Ain't gonna happen easily. The bass need cover in there to ambush their prey from. Think of tree tops, etc. that have holes in the cover that are 12" dia to 24+" dia for them to loaf in and dart out of to get their prey. With minimal cover they are like marathon runners - eating a lot of calories but burning most of them off swimming around. In your pond you want about 1/4 acre minimum of cover for the fish. Do you have that of the correct sized cover? Don't stock any more minnows, let the bass eat them and start working on the baby bluegills.

What is your water clarity? Sometimes if turbidity is high this can hinder a predator's ability to see and eat lots of small fish. Also your bass were stocked in September. For TN I don't think you will see as much growth during Oct to April compared to May to Sept. Getting 3"-4" of growth from small LMB during a TN winter is pretty good IMO.

No problem with bass growth now, they are really growing females are 10 inches or better and males smaller but they are really healthy now and very aggressive. I caught my first 2 hybrid speckle belly this week. Got to be the best looking bream I have ever seen and growing nicely. Stocked 2 inchers in Febuary and they are 4 to 5 inch already. But nothing grows like CNBG, if you feed them every day good food. I got 10 inch fish already and wider than your hand in one year!


Thank you guys for all the help on this forum. Hooking up my aerator at my new 3/8 acre pond saturday. Very excited! It just got delivered Pro Lake 1.1 1/2 motor with 9 inch Duraplate diffuser 1/2 motor with built in timer.

The only thing that I would have done different is stocked minnows redear and speckle belly first wait. Then add the bass when I added the coppernose. They grow great but they sure spawn alot already having to cull lots of small ones. CNBG need a predator quicker than I did it. But it is all good!

After dealing with fish for ponds and LMB for around 40 years, these are some of my experiences. You said "The bass were stocked September 1 and were 3 to 4 inches. 7 months later they are 6 inches and 7 inches and thin." Also you said "I am only stocking bass to control Bream."
1. Since your goal is to have LMB as bream control and help produce big bream, I would not be too concerned that they are not real fat at this point in time. Your bass are a tool for sunfish control so ideally you want them lean and mean to consume lots of small BG. The more they eat small BG the better and bigger your bream will become. The larger the bass get the more they will focus on eating larger bream. IMO you want mostly 1"-3" BG getting the heaviest predation which means most of these bream sizes are preyed on heavily by 9"-12" bass. Bigger 15"-17" bass prefer to eat 3.2" to 4.5" BG. Remember that guideline for predation pressure for the size groups of your bream population.

2. I think you ideally do not really want lots of FHM to be present. These FHM will detract from the new young LMB growing and eating this spring's bream new offspring. IMO you do not want the LMB to be eating mostly the abundant FHM and not prey heavily of the new bream hatchlings that will soon be present. I am not sure that I would have initially stocked any FHM with your stated pond goals. You want lean mean hungry small bass to heavily prey on bream late stage fry and small fingerlings to large fingerlings.

3. Years of dealing with many fish farms taught me a lot about how they operate and sell fish. Some are definitely better than others!. Not all are alike. IMO the 3" - 4" LMB that you bought in a TN September were IMO one option of a good bass to buy for your goals. A. 3"-4" LMB in September were either mostly males; males tend to grow a little slower than the females. Males also stay somewhat smaller than female bass. B. A sorted and graded size of bass, or C. a first year class mixture of fish that had been over crowded as fingerlings each not getting ample food. Well fed LMB fry by September should be 5-7" long. See later.

IMO these 3"-4" LMB were good for your stated goals of good control of bream offspring.

Fact Lesson - each hatched year class of bass has a large range of growth potential IF all these fish get all the good foods they can consume. A large Spring hatch of bass grown in a well fed pond will genetically and normally have some slow growers (2"-3") and some very fast growers 7"-9" some maybe 10" and the bulk of the hatchlings will be in the middle sizes of 4"-6" ALL at 5 months old in climate of TN. Most producer fish farms will then sort or grade these bass into $ size groups. Your ""fish guy"" probably bought this size class of fingerling bass from a large producer, or maybe but less likely, he grew them himself. Crowd all the hatchlings together in limited space with limited foods and most all will be the 2"-4" sizes at 5-12 months old. A low percentage of the more aggressive ones aka "jumpers" could easily be 8"-10 long".