Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Harvesting Little Bass: How Small?

For LMB overpopulated waters, which is most, harvest is a key management tool. Take out the underperformers, throw back the healthiest. General rule of thumb in the South is below 14 inches, harvest, unless it is fat & aggressive. Above 14 inches, don't harvest, unless it is underweight.

But there seem to be two schools of thought about really small LMB, say, below 8 inches. On the one hand, they make good forage for the big LMB, so should not be harvested. On the other, they eat small forage fish themselves, like BG, that could have fed larger LMB. That being so, the little guys should be harvested.

I tend to throw back LMB under 8 inches, but maybe I shouldn't. What say you?

I figure that only crazy bass are in seine.

Clipping the tail fin as close to the body as possible works well for me. Doing that means the fish can't easily swim away, and the flailing of the fish entices predators. If you do this at the same time of day, LMB may show up to wait on a low exertion meal. If you want to "stun" the BG, just put them in a bucket with a small amount of clove oil added to the water, and they'll be lethargic when thrown back into the pond.

Our cull cut line is a nonnegotiable 15". Overton's came and electroshocked our pond last week, and they pulled 150# out. I don't let relative weights change my decision because the amount of small forage they eat is the issue, not the under performance of some LMB.

Rusto, some folks like Bruce Condello feed train their bass with bluegill they've fin clipped & stunned, so something similar could certainly be done with small LMB. It does seem to work, though you might end up feeding a heron or cormorant. I used this strategy once on a 11 inch LMB to entice a large tiger musky.

Last night on Pond Boss Live, Bob said an 8" bass in the springtime is a year old and should be 12 to 14 inches...cull it! And worse, the 8" bass will be eating all the little 1/2 to 1 inch bluegills, robbing the future food for the larger bass.