Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Did your thoughts related to fish change once you

had a pond and they became "your" fish?

Mine did... Not totally sure that is a good thing. I caught the biggest bass I'd ever personally seen (9 or 10 #). Didn't want to spend the time it took for a photo. Wanted to get it back in the water asap. When I see a picture of someone holding a big bass up by its lip, I cringe. I stopped using plastic worms much after reading about them being lodged in fish's stomachs. I seldom use lures with treble hooks any more...

Goal for the future is to start using some of those lures again and putting a lot more of my fish in the skillet instead of letting them die of old age in the pond.

Every year we have about 10 scouts come to a neighbors place and they camp there and fish my pond for their merit badges. Fun to watch kids try to fish and catch some for the first time. It’s a yearly thing now

Let's suppose that you were raising any animal crop be it chickens, mice, rats, cats, rabbits sheep, pigs or foxes and yes even fish in a pen or pond.

Feeding the animal crop even more increases productivity as more biovolume /biomass. What will happen if you allow them to continually breed in the pen or POND, then regularly increase the food amount to them due to more animals and then did not regularly remove some??? Just because you cannot see all of them does not mean they are not present. Eventual overpopulation, crowding, lower body weight, poor health, sickness and deaths. Use your common sense and manage the numbers of fish that each year keep reproducing in your pond. Harvest, harvest, harvest even if it is small fish. In the water it is difficult to actually see how many fish are present and how much they are being crowded.

I use barbless hooks for all my fresh water fishing by choice and here we have to use barbless hooks for salmon, sturgeon and steelhead. As long as you keep your line tight you won't lose many fish at all. I can't remember the last time I lost a fish in my pond after the hookup

Yep, keep the bend in the rod and don't have any slack line and you won't lose a fish that you wouldn't have lost if the hook was barbed.

Kids will learn faster on the proper catching technique too.

A customer has a small pond where he was growing HBG. They were up to 1.5#, and he wasn't harvesting them, AND he didn't have the aeration system running. Mother Nature decided to harvest them for him. That's a shame, they were some great fish.

Except for one Walleye week in Canada, I hadn't done any serious fishing for over thirty years when we built our first pond. So rather than changing my thoughts on fishing, getting a pond kind of established them in the first place.

I hadn't fished in over 35 years until earlier this year, but have always fished with the goal of catching dinner. If any fish in our pond succeed in dying of old age, it'll be because they're either luckier or smarter than we are. I love to fish, but I love eating fresh caught fish even more.

CCarl, I wish you lived closer to my place. Hate to throw smaller LMB up on the bank, but not much choice when nobody wants to eat them.

Dang!

That is a painful problem to have.

Know any of the local boy scout leaders?

I bet one afternoon at your place with a troop would introduce many boys to fishing that have never fished before! They could probably also complete most of the requirements for their Fishing merit badge.

If you did it at the right time of year, then small LMB would probably be the most common fish caught.

Bonus points if one of the leaders is a bass fisherman and he would fillet a mess of 10-12" LMB!