Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Healthy Water

Good evening everyone and I hope that you all had a great Thanksgiving.

During this time off over the holiday I have spent many hours on YouTube watching the Pond Boss videos and have a few questions. In his videos he discusses the requirements for a pond to be productive which includes having "Healthy Water". I had the water tested about 3 years ago and I cannot seem to locate my results but I recall that lime was recommended. The fishery guy that surveys my pond and supplies my fish recommended that I not lime the pond because of the amount of flow through that I have so I have not. I asked him recently about fertilization and he strongly discouraged that as well. I have owned the pond for almost 4 years and do not think that I have ever seen a plankton bloom. Is this common or am I just missing something? I have a water clarity of around 40" and the water usually has a brown tint to it most of the year. I have been working on developing this pond into a possible trophy bass pond with fish in the double digit range. The pond is 5 acres and has a constant flow. The pond is always full. Maximum depth is around 9' with the majority of the pond being 5' to 6' deep.

Here's what I have done thus far:

2 Texas feeders feeding the forage. Been feeding 3 times a day for 2+ years and I have an abundance of all sizes of BG and shiners.
The milfoil was chemically removed last summer.
I have added lots of structure in deep and shallow water.
I have been removing all LMB 14" and under. I had the shocker boat remove around 60 LMB a couple months ago.
The fishery guy has recommended improving the genetics of the bass because of the poor growth habits of the current bass. He is adding 50 F1 bass 6"+ tomorrow.
I added 800 4 to 5 inch BG in the spring of 2021
This past year I have added around 3000 BG (all sizes)


Question 1. What time of the year should I have the water tested again?
Question 2. Is liming a pond with such a flow through a waste of money?
Question 3. Why have I not witnessed a plankton bloom?
Question 4. Can a pond with flow through not be fertilized?
Question 5. What am I missing?

Thanks,

Dean

Question 1. What time of the year should I have the water tested again?

Now. That will give you a baseline when the majority of P isn't bound up in phytoplankton or plants. Test for alkalinity, N and P. BUT without alkalinity that is a minimum of 40 ppm, any nutrients won't be able to be utilized if the alkalinity isn't at least that high

Question 2. Is liming a pond with such a flow through a waste of money?

You never stated how much flow through the pond had. How much does it have?

Question 3. Why have I not witnessed a plankton bloom?

Possibly see the answer for question #1.

Question 4. Can a pond with flow through not be fertilized?

Sure, but if the alkalinity isn't over 40 ppm, then you will keep seeing the results you are having.

Question 5. What am I missing?

How old is the pond?

What is the RW of the bass that are in there now, and how big (in length) are the larger LMB now? How does the RW compare from this year to the previous years? Does the RW of the LMB stay consistent throughout the different year classes of LMB or does the RW vary greatly between the year classes? How is the BG population, when you say abundance, how many do you estimate and what are the size ranges? Are you seeing plentiful BG of all age classes? How many LMB are you harvesting every year (in pounds)? By adding 6" F1's, they could become food for the LMB that are in there now if there are LMB in there over 18"..... What was the reason why the fishery guy didn't want to add straight Northern or straight Florida strain LMB?

When you say abundant, how abundant? To get LMB to grow quickly, you want to have fish that are between 1/3 and 1/4 the length of the LMB in there, and at a ratio of 2,000:1 to 3,000:1 for the fastest growth. (forage fish to LMB)

If you were to estimate the amount of structure and cover in the pond in surface acres, how much is there? i.e 1/4 acre, 1/2 acre, etc. Is the cover made of things that have different sizes of openings in there or are they all one thing (i.e . brush piles).

This is a tough one to figure out from a distance, but I think you are on the correct track getting a water test done. Bob Lusk helped Richmond Mills up their fishery (a flow through system like yours) by adding a bunch of fish feeders and feeding the fish. That put a lot more nutrients in the water and even though they didn't adjust the water quality, the added food helped the BG grow fast. I would set up 2 Texas Hunter Feeders and feed a mixture of Optimal Bluegill and Optimal Bass food. I would also stock feed trained pure Florida strain LMB, and 2-3 years down the road add a Texas Avenger feeder or a Sweeney Bigmouth Feeder and feed the Optimal Hand Throw Pellets to the feed trained LMB.

Adding a bunch of lime to the pond might help, and adding a bunch of limestone and lime in the stream that feeds the pond might help a lot too, but until the amount of water flowing through the pond and the retention time of the water that is in the pond is determined that is a big IF. Once you get those numbers and get the test results from the water test then a plan can be formulated.

A bass needs to eat food that is 1/4 to 1/3 it's body length to maximize the food intake for the calories expended. It takes approximately 10# of fish to put one pound of weight on one bass, so you can see the battle you are up against. A 4.5"-5.5" BG is the size that 14"-19" LMB need to eat. There are between 60 and 99 pounds of BG in 1,000 BG of that size. You can see how the more bass are in a pond the more BG need to be in the pond for them to grow quickly. 16"-17" LMB that are 70%-80% RW are roughly 1.47 to 2.08 pounds each. So if you take out 100# of LMB that size you are only removing 48-68 fish. I would remove at least 2x that number of fish for the next 2 years and track the RW of the fish caught during that time. Even if they are coon food, that will help the pond immensely.

If you stock feed trained bass, they should have a FCR of 1.4 to 2.6 while eating fish pellets.

Feed conversion ratio (FCR) is the conventional measure of production efficiency: the weight of feed intake divided by weight gained by the animal.

With a good commercial fish food like Optimal you can see that it's cheaper to grow a pound of bass on fish food pellets vs. forage fish if you have to purchase the forage fish.

Talk to your fishery guy to see if he can estimate the amount of BG that are in the pond and the age class distribution that is in the pond. That should be an indicator of whether the LMB have enough forage to grow in the pond, or if a LOT more LMB have to be removed. Here is some data for you, you can run the numbers to calculate the amount of BG in the pond if you can get an idea of how many BG of what size he saw when electroshocking the pond.

BG
1"-2.5" 4-11#/1,000 fish
2.5"-3.5" 12-24#/1,000
3.5"-4.5" 25-59#/1,000
4.5"-5.5" 60-99#/1,000
5.5"-6"+ 100+#/1,000

So given those numbers, a single 17" LMB that weighs 2.08# will need to eat 100 5.5" BG to add one pound of weight, 170 4.5" BG, over 400 3.5" BG, etc. That is for ONE LMB. Now multiply those numbers by the amount of LMB that are in your pond and you can see what you are up against.

Feeding the BG a good commercial fish food will give them more body weight, which will allow the females to produce more eggs. More BG, the faster the LMB in the pond will grow.

Anthro - how old are your bass in the pond? More that 5yrs? Topping out at 7lb in a 7 acre pond highly suggests that that 6-7 lb individuals are hitting a food and competition growth wall. This is likely due to still too many bass eating the limited food base or to a lesser possibility the right abundance and sizes of food are not there or present at high enough density for those top end 7lb bass.

In East TX those bass if well fed should be growing at least 1 lb per year and better fed individuals could be growing 1.2-2 lb per year. What are the electro harvest analyses saying for number of LMB catch per hour? Electro survey should be capturing numerous smaller LMB per hour of effort (CPUE). IMO I would do two things: increase the number of feeders to 1 /ac or 1.5feeder per ac. How fast do the pellets get consumed.??

Dean - Often but not always when the total hardness is low the alkalinity is low. Usually the two parameters are closely related because both are express as CaCO3. Bicarbonates, carbonates, & hydroxides represent the major form of alkalinity and other small amounts of salts of weak acids can be present for alkalinity..Whereas total hardness is caused primarily by calcium(Ca), magnesium(Mg) & strontium (Sr). It will be interesting now to hear what the alkalinity is when your T hardness is 11.

Having to add BG or other forage to keep LMB well fed is a big sign there are WAY too many 'foxes in the chicken house'. In a balanced community the forage should be able to keep up or maintain good numbers without having to add forages.

Anthro - I do not know much about your pond history so help me with this. I am assuming the pond did not have any bass in 2016 when FL-LMB were stocked?? If you now think your "main" LMB are the 2017 northern strain as 5 yr old fish and some are weighing 7 lbs (22.5") equals 1.4 lb gain per year - IMO it is good okay growth. Thus if they grow 1.2lbs by Fall 2023 (6yr old) they should be 8.4lbs. If you can WORK to maintain good sizes and amounts of forage items for these larger bass and if they gain just 1 lb per year then in 4 yrs (10yr old) some should be 12 lbs – Great. That is success IMO and SO FAR you are on the right path. Lusk in his new podcast at time point 7:10 says most LMB do not hit 10lb until 10 yr old is “more normal”. If your LMB are 12 pounds at 10 yrs you are doing several things right.

https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=activetopics&range=30&type=t

Have you watched Lusk’s new podcast for growing big bass?? At time mark of 7:50 he says your bigger 7lb+ bass can and NEED to eat big meals consisting of big food items for their meals; time 8:51. Your 7-8 lb bass can be eating 12”-14” bass – so they want big meals – IMPORTANT point to keep them growing at the 1 lb+ / yr rate. At 9:45 Bob says as the bass grow they need larger and larger foods for maintaining efficient growth of 1+lb /yr. Lusk says typical life span of FL-LMB will be 12-15 yrs (time point 7:15). If you do this right with bass 12 yr old some should be 12 to maybe 14 lbs. See my idea later.

Important for growing big bass is removing LOTS of smaller bass. Are you culling and working hard to remove the smaller 7"-14" bass using the RW guidelines to help allow or make available more of the APPROPRIATE SIZED forage fish to the remaining bigger bass? Bigger bass need bigger foods for proper efficiency of eating, body weight maintenance and growth rate. Do not over crowd your bass nor let them get overcrowded!. Remember for managing for big bass it means lower angler catch rates - it is a tradeoff; big bass having lower catch rates versus mostly medium bass that result in higher angler catch rates. .

Do you live at your pond? If yes and it were me, I would copy Bruce Condello’s fish growing method. Bruce fishes specifically for small bass 6”-11”. He might even catch and store some of these extra small bass in a live box or cage. With these small bass,,, he almost daily or daily hand feeds them to his biggest bass. To start this method, I would cut the tails off your small bass and at the dock maybe at first even stun them as you toss them into the pond. Your biggest bass will soon learn to wait there for your ‘welfare’ meals to them. This method if done regularly will put maybe 2 lbs of weight per year on these dockside ‘welfare’ bass. The method also puts your excess small bass to a very good purpose and use.

I doubt that all your 2016 FL LMB were eaten and not currently present because there should have been enough non minnow pond foods for those FL's that at least some of them survived and grew to 5"-8" in 2016 before the NorthernLMB were added in 2017. I think there is a very good chance that some of your now 7lb bass are the Florida strain stockers .

One more item. Lusk says 1/2 of all those stocker bass that you bought for stocking were "junk" as being male bass. These males will never grow to trophy size. The males are eating lots of valuable forage foods so do your best to get rid to them. Maybe try focusing on catching them off the spawning beds. during spawning season any thinner bodied bass are very likely a males. And when angling at spawning season also remove every smaller (10"-14") bass that you catch.

14' x 10' x .04167' (1/2") = 5.83 cu. ft of volume

5.83 x 7.48 gallons/cu. feet = 43.63 gallons per 4.7 seconds.

Divide by 4.7 seconds = 9.28 gallons/sec.

9.28 x 60 x 60 x 24 = 801,792 gallons/day

That is my math on the page Dean. Hopefully, that way if I did a term wrong someone can correct my error.

Good luck on your pond management. That sounds like a very healthy water flow rate to keep what you want IN your pond, and let what you don't want OUT of your pond fairly quickly.