Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Bluegill growing like crazy and LMB cull part III

For those who want to follow the whole story a link to part II is here

I’m beginning to wonder if I might need to do a BG cull…

The 150 BG I stocked last April have taken over the pond and I can easily catch 8-9” BG that weight up to 9oz. The young BG are also along all the shore lines. They are clearly very happy in the pond.

I have a Texas Hunter feeder and was feeding them 1s once a day last year and the fish ate but it was not very enthusiastic. That has changed. They are now piranhas with the big ones competing with all the smaller size classes. I stayed at the 1s once per day, but today added a second feeding of 1s.

The LMB remain small (avg=9in) and generally below the 100% RW. Given the huge number of BG in the pond it’s a bit puzzling to me. The last two I caught were both 7.5 inches and skinny. Fishing is not the most scientific sampling, but I should have started to see some that are bigger than the 9 inch average that I saw all last year- especially since I’ve removed ~150 LMB in the past year (including the aforementioned pair of 7.5 inch fish).

Should I start taking any action on the BG or just let it play out for another year or so?

Checking back in after a flurry of activity and then the requisite waiting and watching. It's been almost a year and the BG stocking, feeding, and LMB culling are starting to have an effect.

As a quick recap, my 3/4 acre pond had nothing but stunted LMB in 2021. Since that time, I stocked 150 BG in April 2021 and removed about 200 LMB with most all in the 5-10 inch range. I also installed a Texas Hunter feeder for supplemental feeding.

Fast forward to today. I've caught 3 BG over 1 lb and just caught a 16" 2lb 1oz LMB. I'm starting to aggressively cull any BG too big for the LMB to eat but leaving the biggest male BG to induce even bigger BG sizes. In danger of stating the obvious, the LMB catch rates have dropped by 50%- bigger bass = fewer bass.

I'm certain that the pond has not yet hit an equilibrium and hope to have an areation system up and running in a few weeks so it's going to be a year or more before I know what is really going on.

Special shout out to Essup and Jpdad who have helped guide me through this learning!!

A 9" BG @ 9 oz. that you have caught is 112% RW. The bass that you are catching @ 7.5"-9" can only eat BG that are 2.5"-3" in length max. The LMB in the pond might not have enough cover for them to ambush the BG from, so they might be like marathon runners, constantly swimming and burning up calories to catch enough BG to survive, let alone get fat.

The biggest BG are most likely the ones that you stocked, just like you are thinking.

I'd look at transferring LMB that are between 1# and 2#, I am not sure that larger fish than that would do well in the pond since they are used to catching fish to eat in the BOW that you sourced them from. Bob Lusk stocked bigger LMB in a clients pond and found that they actually lost weight ( maybe because they couldn't figure out the best places to ambush forage fish?). Those 1# to 2# LMB would be eating BG that are (roughly) between 3" and 5.3" in length. Don't a lot of LMB that size, just a few, and I would fin clip those particular fish to allow you to see if LMB that size are caught whether those fish were stocked by you or if they grew to that size in the pond.

I didn't see if that pond is aerated or not. If not, during the summer the fish probably won't be able to utilize the water that is deeper than 8' due to low O2 levels.

Another thing to think about is that you need cover in the pond not only for the bluegill but for the LMB. The cover for the LMB has to have openings in it so the LMB that you are wanting to thrive in the pond can swim in/under, turn around and face out to ambush prey fish that swim past. Ideally you'd want to have roughly 20%-25% of the surface area of the pond in cover for the fish in the water depths that they will be able to survive. Depending on the water temp in the pond during different times of the year that may be shallow water or the deepest water in the pond.

It looks like you are just measuring the length of the majority of the fish that you are catching. Make a chart for LMB and another one for BG, get a good scale and record both weights and lengths. That will tell you how the fish are growing, and if a certain length of LMB is under performing (as noted by weight) that will tell you about what available food sources that size class of LMB has to eat. You'd want to cull that size LMB and the next size smaller to allow the available forage fish to grow larger to feed the size class of LMB that is underweight.

If the goal in the pond is to grow big BG, then cull any LMB over 14". If the goal is to grow larger LMB (that will be hard to manage in that size pond) I would recommend culling the smaller LMB and fin clip 50 of the bigger LMB and only leave those fin clipped bigger ones in there. That will also give you an idea if the bigger LMB are getting hook shy (record the number of times you catch a fin clipped LMB and note any identifying marks on the individual fish).

You could buy a fish tagging kit with numbered floy tags, that way you could track the individual fish length/weight if re-caught.

Here is the data so far for 2022. 32 LMB caught and 29 culled (7.0lbs). Forgive the formatting but I think it is readable. My summary stats for 2021 is further down. (I'll take advive for how to better post...)


DATE CULLED LENGTH (in) WEIGHT (oz) RW
04/10/22 Y 9.75 6.6 0.92
04/24/22 Y 7.00 1.05 0.44
04/24/22 Y 7.00 1.05 0.44
04/24/22 Y 5.00 0.75 0.94
04/24/22 Y 5.00 0.75 0.94
04/24/22 Y 5.00 0.75 0.94
04/24/22 Y 5.00 0.75 0.94
04/24/22 Y 9.25 5 0.83
04/30/22 Y 6.00 1.4 0.96
04/30/22 Y 10.50 9.8 1.08
04/30/22 Y 9.75 6.1 0.85
04/30/22 Y 10.50 8.7 0.95
04/30/22 Y 9.50 5.4 0.82
05/07/22 Y 8.25 4.4 1.06
05/07/22 Y 9.50 5.5 0.84
05/07/22 Y 9.00 5.3 0.96
05/07/22 Y 6.50 1.9 NA
05/21/22 Y 9.50 6.5 0.99
05/21/22 Y 7.50 2.9 0.96
05/30/22 Y 6.75 1.9 0.89
05/30/22 Y 9.50 5 0.76
05/30/22 Y 9.50 5.1 0.78
06/04/22 N 9.00 4.7 0.85
06/20/22 Y 7.50 3.0 NA
06/20/22 Y 7.50 3.0 NA
06/25/22 Y 10.00 7.4 0.95
06/25/22 Y 8.25 3.5 0.85
06/25/22 Y 7.50 2.6 0.86
06/25/22 Y 10.00 6.6 0.85
06/25/22 N 10.50 10.7 1.17
06/25/22 Y 5.00 0 NA
06/26/22 N 10.50 10 1.10


Stats for 2021. 148 LMB caught and 128 culled (40.5lbs). The population was very homogenous.

Length (inches)
Average: 8.7
Median: 9.0
StdDev: 1.5

Smallest was 6" and the largest was 14" There have been only two bass caught bigger 12" or larger. 90% of all bass have been below 100% RW