Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Getting started on a 50 acre unmanaged pond

Hello everyone, longtime lurker on this forum, first time poster. My family has had property in Michigan's northern lower peninsula for almost 25 years. A 50 acre lake sits in the center of the property, never been stocked (as long as it's been in our hands) Lake is crescent shaped, with a number of bays and points and steep drops offs around the entirety of the lake, the deepest spot is 27 feet, with an average 18 foot channel going through the center of the lake. My main focus in this lake are the largemouth bass. The lake also has a good number of northern pike.

Over the last 10 years or so I've noticed the catch rates are very high, with the numbers of trophy bass going way down. We've operated almost strictly catch and release as we mistakenly thought that was the only way to go to maintain big bass. I've started keeping track of weights over the last year and most of our bass are in the 80-90 percent relative weight range. I've heard advice saying keep everything under 14 inches, but looking at my charts, that would probably be an insignificant portion of the harvest, as the vast majority of the fish I catch are in the 16-17 inch range.

I'm trying to devise a management plan and my main focus is trophy bass, am I better off just taking everything that is under relative weight even in that 17 inch range? I'm also open to any other suggestions as to how to move forward, thank you.

I suggest you get professional help. It is extremely hard to give good advice on a big water with lots of species absent sound data. My guess is those LMB pictured are not spawning but are hunting the warming shallows.

Lots of PB posters will try to help but only you can make the decision. IMO you should not make any major choice without pro help on a water like this. Everything I have read so far sounds like you have a predator heavy lake that has low productivity. If so, you can make changes based on goals (every goal is not sound for every lake) but the goal should be determined after you have good info and a reasonable list of goals that are lake appropriate. IMO that requires an eyes on examination buy a pro with experience with lakes like yours.

All the rest is just guys like us (all posters above) with limited info shooting in the dark to try and help you out.

As I mentioned above adjusting an unbalanced multi-species fishery in 50 acres is a very daunting task. jpsdad is focusing on " if we double the production of prey what's the expectation for predator growth?"
Just doubling the amount of prey of which is the best specie or species to focus on would be a difficult task to determine and create good results without some study. IMO just doubling the amount of prey might not be the correct answer if the prey specie or species are not the correct size for optimizing the growth of the main target predator into producing larger predators of LMB and Pike. Increasing prey numbers and not appropriately and appreciably reducing numbers of predators is probably what is needed, but how does one do this in a private lake of this size and do it effectively to get good desired results??

What is going to determine how many of what size predator needs to be removed without knowing the entire forage basis that is or will be needed to create larger predators and keep full fishery recruitment active??? This complex multispecies fishery IMO has no doubt numerous feeding levels in the food web for the predators.

Which prey species do we focus on for increasing their numbers? And what is the species composition and what are the sizes available of ALL prey species for producing even larger predators? What part does the recruitment of carp and redhorse play as forage species in this lake??? This should be studied and determined really for each prey specie present including the small LMB as prey in this lake. This again IMO is where professional advice is needed. I think the food chain and food web in this old naturalized 50 ac lake is significantly more complex than most ponds commonly dwelt with here on this forum.

mistickslinger says "the vast majority of the fish I catch are in the 16-17 inch range."

These I think are very decent sized bass for northern MI waters.
What will it take to reduce these fish numbers and when the numbers are reduced, how many large bass numbers per acre will be the result? What are the implications of having to fish numerous more HOURS to catch those fewer wise old bass? Is this really what is needed for this lake that appears to be an average angler's sweet spot for frequently catching lots of 16"-17" fish? How do we know that some large bass are not already present? Is it just because they are not regularly caught? Big bass often become hook smart and it takes special fishing finesse to catch them. It could be that the medium size bass are numerous enough and hungry enough that they get to angler's regularly used bait before the biggest bass. I have had that happen with YP and walleye communities. Big bass do NOT get big by being dumb to angler's common methods.

In depth fish structure study may reveal that adding several larger predators such as Musky or tiger musky as tools to reduce bass and small pike numbers while creating a bonus predator could be a good benefit and help achieve the goal of larger bass for this lake? Again a good fishery community evaluation and study should be made before making a mixed species fishery even more complex.

Consider this - maybe the management effort should first focus on removing some of the correct habitat to make more prey available for predation??? We on this forum do not even know what types and amount of things that comprise the total habitat in this lake. As noted this is a complex habitat with many interacting species. There are a lot of ecological factors involved in manipulating the size structure of fishes involved in this medium size lake. Which ones are really the best ones and most productive ones / items to focus on????

If it were my lake I would be contacting some fishery professors at regional colleges and universities to see if they would make manipulating this lake's fishery, toward the owner's goal, a school fishery class or a MS and or PhD dissertation project. Whatever is done on the lake to change the size structure of the fishery, it will take lots of effort, time, money and knowledge. Instead of trying to self-manipulate this daunting project and after years of effort that likely will result in less than good success, why not save lots of time, effort and wasted money and put an appropriate amount of money toward a fishery class or student project guided by a trained fishery scientist? IMO your chances of success and the overall benefits would be a lot better using this approach.