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Scott emailed me...here are my thoughts. Cull bass...they started the "problem". Weigh and measure all bass caught. If they are under 90 relative weight, remove those fish. If they are 95 or bigger, release them. Those between 90-95, judge the fish on its own merit. How many, you might ask? All of them under 14" for sure. If your biggest bluegills are at least six years old, cull some of them...they are at the end of their lifespan. Don't take the best, fattest ones...take underweight fish to make room for other bluegills to grow up into the slot. Cull bluegills to improve the food chain. If trophy bluegills are a significant goal, only take the underperformers of the larger ones. Increase the lake's productivity by feeding the fish a good, fish-meal-based fish food, and consider fertilization, depending on water clarity.
The dynamics of the population need to be shifted, starting by removing bass...get the mouths off the feed trough. As you do that, alter the bluegills to stimulate a series of spawns. If your adult bluegill numbers seem low due to attrition, consider stocking some younger adult fish, 4-7" long. Feed them and they'll perform.
Last piece of advice...make sure you have enough areas for bluegills to spawn. That's a universal problem I see around most of the south and southeast.
Bob - love a thread I started many many years ago! I posted that one right after you and your better half left our ranch and pond - so after reading all of the awesome post here my plan is to not cull my BG - rather I am going to cull around 50 of my bass between 8 inches and 14 inches. Caught this guy today so I think overall things are going well - he went 7.5 lbs
