Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Nick from central Louisiana

Hi all, I'm Nick and live in central Louisiana. I bought a new home in May of '22 and with it a 1.5 acre pond. The pond was neglected for a number of years and the LMB population exploded. My first time fishing the pond I caught 10 bass is as many minutes and each one was roughly 11". It was fun and my kids loved it, but I figured it was indicative of an unbalanced pond. Since then every fishing trip has yielded the same class of fish.

That first summer I did not observe a BG spawn anywhere on the shoreline. That is when I began harvesting LMB. We have harvested about 40 pounds of bass. Shortly after that initial harvest I added about 75 adult BG and Chinquapin (Red Ear) from a local lake. Our second summer I observed at least three BG colonies, each consisting of about 30 beds.

The LMB have become difficult to catch. Unsure if it was because of numbers or pressure, I began fishing shiners because I wanted to assess the population. Each trip yields 1 or 2 fish on shiners and they are in that same 11 inch class. My understanding is that it is unlikely that a stunted bass population will resume desirable growth, so that hasn't really been a surprise to me.

My plan now is to begin sinking cover and feeding my BG. I'm planning to buy a few hundred pellet trained fish in the next couple of weeks to serve as teacher fish. I'm also throwing a cast net in an attempt to survey the population. My first few casts have me a little concerned because the BG I caught were about 4 inches. It seems unlikely that both populations would become stunted, right? That is likely an overreaction because it was 3 fish from the same area on only 4 casts.

Feel free to tell me what I've done wrong or how you think I should proceed. I'm excited to join the conversation!

If you are using the same quality of feed or better that the hatchery was using, water temps are in the mid 60's - low 80's, are feeding at the same time and same place AND in 2'-4' water, then I'd say a week to maybe 10 days.

If using lower quality feed, it could be longer because it doesn't taste as good, same for any of the other parameters.

I have BG that I have in holding tanks in 51 degree water and they are eating Optimal Starter #4 feed.

It may help you to get more fish on feed by soaking the feed in water for about 7-10 minutes before throwing it in the water. Obviously, this means feeding by hand as there's no way to do that with an automated feeder. But, you will get more fish on the feed quicker. As you observe fish taking feed early on, you'll see several fish take a pellet in and then spit it back out. With the feed a bit mushy, there is far less spitting of the feed.

Once the fish know they love the feed, they'll take the dry feed with no hesitation.

If you do the hydrated feed route to get started, do it at the same place as the automated feeder.

Both Nick and MountainWard, you two might try hanging a 4 to 7" live bass on a hook under a bobber with no or very little weight, and let it swim around. If there are some really large bass in the ponds, as you know or it can guess there are, you just might get a hookup.

I've harvested 55 LMB over the last nine days. I picked up a scale and began logging weight the other night. I have weight data for 16 of those 55, but I'll be logging it from here on out. Based on those 16, and I know thats a small sample size, average length is 10.93 and weight is .543. Based on the standard weight chart I'm using my fish are about 17% behind where they should be.

Of course this only confirms what I already knew, but at least now I have some hard data. Interested to see how things shift over the next several months. I'm planning to track the overall averages but also the monthly averages so that I can see progress.

I did spot a a nice fish on a bed, probably 21" or so. That was encouraging, though I'm sure it is skinny.

I do not believe there are any CC in there. They were stocked probably 10-12 years ago. No clue how many or if there was any harvest. As I understand it, a CC population is unlikely to recruit and maintain itself. I plan to make a few juglines just to make sure. I have no interest in having CC.