Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - LMB in 1 ac pond

Question for experts. I believe I’m ready to give up on my HSB, SMB, YP, and RES experiment. We catch an occasional YP, on the small side. No SMB, and no HSB. There are still lots of golden shiners and RES/HBG cross of all sizes.
I’m thinking of just adding some LMB and letting them try and get control of the shiners and HBG. I don’t know what has happened to my SMB, and YP. I suspect more otters although I can’t find a trail, or any scat, or see otters like I have in the past. I have never seen any floating dead fish. Maybe something else is happening. Whatever it is does not affect the shiners or the HBG though.
So, how many and what sizes would you all recommend for LMB?
Thanks!

Size and number of LMB really depends on 1. how fast you want to get small fish numbers reduced; 2. what sizes of small fish and really the specie you want reduced.

Remember the LMB IMO will be first consuming or targeting the more slender bodied prey as the biggest sizes that LMB can capture. Obviously IMO an 8" LMB will quicker eat a 3" YP compared to eating a 3" sunfish when both 3" the YP and sunfish are equal numbers. With using the LMB in your pond's current fishery, Plan on the YP population to be more quickly reduced compared to your sunfish in numbers in the panfishes. If it were me I would make some current catch written records from simple angling methods and sessions using worm/bobber and compare al that are caught over the next several years (3-6) then you will be able to better evaluate how the LMB are impacting the fishery balance from now into 2028 - 2032.

What do you expect the LMB to be ultimately doing as far as reducing fish sizes and density in 2027 and 2028? What are the sizes of the most abundant fish you want to remove??? All this info will help with providing better advice for sizes and numbers of LMB to best be stocked. Remind us as to pond size and water clarity.

Your experiment may have "failed" to some degree because it was in a new pond. Your pond is now significantly different as a mature 12 y.o. pond. You might try some modifications and have more success this time around because your pond is more fertile.

Also, do you have any other type of minnow in the pond after the FHM were presumably extirpated? Your pond looks pretty fertile to me in the pictures, so I suspect you had plenty of zooplankton and small aquatic insects to feed the YP and SMB as they moved from fry to fingerlings. However, as they moved from fingerlings to adults they sure could use an abundant minnow population to make that transition. Can you get any gambusia in your area? The ones in my creek grow very fast over the course of the summer and look like calorie-filled chunks to me.

Also, as Theo says, how is your spawning habitat? I was amazed at the larger size of the rocks used for bedding material by some of our members with good SMB recruitment. The guys with good YP recruitment frequently note the eggs draped on their spawning structures. Did you ever notice that, or work on that in your pond?

OTOH, there is a reason so many people stock LMB in their ponds. They are just easier to get good reproduction. If your family members are at the ages that there will be lots of fishing pressure over the next 5-6 years, maybe switch to a moderately heavy stocking of LMB and count on angling to keep their numbers correct. However, that will almost certainly require BG, which might not be a welcome addition for the recreational swimmers in your pond.

Good luck on your improvements for your Pond 2.0 version!

YP don't use branches to lay their eggs on if there are a lot of openings between the branches. Think of a Christmas tree that is 1-2 years old or a tumbleweed. Once the egg skein is on the bottom of the pond the eggs on the bottom don't get enough O2 to allow them to hatch.

To provide better info more facts are needed as per Bill's comments. However, since you are wanting to add LMB now remember that you can always add more LMB later, but it is not easy to reduce numbers. I prefer adding fewer larger LMB in situations like yours as you have more initial control over survival numbers. I would add about 10 1 lb LMB and be sure to get some males and some females.

SetterGuy,

I couldn't remember if you were absentee or not. I believe most of our best intensive pond managers live at or near their ponds. I too miss some important deadlines on managing our property when I get stuck at work for complicated projects or have family obligations. IMO, an absentee management plan should probably include a few modifications from the "ideal" scenario.

I am not qualified to answer your LMB stocking questions, but you did get esshup and Bill Cody in the thread so that should help you.

What sizes of LMB are available from your fish supplier? If there are some size choices, I would ask our experts which is the best fit for your situation. If needed, you can always add more later. (Unless of course the supplier is delivering? Then you really need to spread that transportation fee over the correct amount of LMB on a one-time deal.)

Sorry to hear about the loss of your larger fish.

Sounds like poachers to me. Either otters or the 2-legged kind. (I have the 2-legged kind on my property periodically.)

Do you have a game camera up? Many of the newer cameras have a "time lapse" setting. I now have some more obscured cameras on my property set on time lapse so they don't need to be triggered to catch a picture of an otter or a distant human.

One time, I even had trespassers remove the chip from a camera that was covering my best fishing spot, but not steal the camera. Which is a strange morality.

Setter Guy, I don't know the layout of your pond or if it has trees around it or not, but from a bass fishing point of view, in the spring, the first areas of any body of water to warm are the northwest shorelines. This warmer water brings in the first spawning bass of the year because the sun rising from the southeast hits it first and has a longer period to warm. You might want to place some spawning beds in the northeast part of your pond to see if that helps with any recruitment. Just a thought.

Terry
PondStat

I'll make sure and say a prayer for them. I wonder if five of them is enough to make a shawl out of? You wife might like that. LOL


Don't give up. Just feed the otters a high-velocity lead diet and they'll go away. :-D Then you'll have a nice LMB fishery.

On a side note, I have a 30-40lb beaver in the creek behind my house. My son and I see it nearly every day when we're down there fishing. It doesn't eat the fish but it has wreaked havoc with my willow trees. The little bugger seems to let them grown to about 20 feet and then in one night chews the things down. If I still lived in Idaho, I could make a beaver hat out of the thing but here in TN they're protected. I'm considering getting a bow and taking it fishing with me...............