A skinny bass I cought. This is typical in my pond. I removed 80 LMB last year and growth is still pretty slow. Does anyone have any suggestions?

There is also a HBG and a picture of the pond.







HBG are pretty Healthy unfortunately I realy don't want them in the pond

You have a beautiful pond. The bass will not generally eat pellets like the hybrids. I would try to remove more bass and increase your forage bass with tilapia or golden shiners. Better yet threadfin shad.

My only option so far is Golden Shiners. I have checked all the fish farms within 100 miles of home and the only forage fish I have been able to find is Golden Shiners. I would love to stock Threadfin Shad but they just arent available (to my knowledge) around here.

When should Golden Shiners be stocked? How many should be stocked in a 2 acre pond? Do I need any special habitat for Golden Shiners?

I also found out that it is illegal to stock Tilapia in any waters in IL. I e-mailed the IDNR and they said Tilapia are forbidden aside from aquariums.

Brett-man...that is a real nice lookin' pond. I love the tree diversity.

I think until you get the bass numbers down and the golden shiners established you will have to stock more than once.

sorry Brett if posted, what size is the pond? I guess that bass to be 3/4 lb if so you took out 60 lbs if all about this size. We recommend when Wr is lower than 85% and fairly fertilie pond, 30 lbs/acre, so if more than 2 acre you should take more with goals of larger bass. Easier method is to monitor Wr if you see it is not changing or getting lower take more bass. This is neccesary to spite also adding more forage.

Do you have regular BG in the pond for forage in addition to the HBG (forgive me if you have mentioned this in the past and I forgot)? I tend to suspect you do since "I realy don't want them (HBG) in the pond". (If by some chance you DON'T have regular BG, adding them is far and away the best thing you can do for bass forage.)

GSH will spawn on grass and other vegetation at the shore of the pond. Skipping mowing the edge of the bank in the Spring until after they have had their spawn (water temp about 72 deg, IIRC) would probably help them a little. In a pond with any existing bass population, I think I would want to stock at least 20 lbs/acre IF all the bass are small ones like that pictured above. If you have any number of bigger, hungry bass, GSH predation losses could be severe. FWIW, I bet it is past GSH spawning time this year everywhere in Illinois.

GSH eat fish feed readily, and feeding them would (worst case) provide bigger bass meals, or (best case) get them in better condition for spawning.

Overall, I'd say keep thinning bass and encourage BG (assuming they are present) spawning by continuing to feed.

P.S. Threadfins would not overwinter this far North. I doubt many if any fish dealers North of Dixie ever handle them for that reason.

Theo,

Yes I do have standard BG in the pond. Their number seem to be up since last year. I have been feeding them regularly and their growth rates are pretty good.

The bass pictured above is actualy a little above average in length. There are some larger LMB but most Are slightly smaller than the LMB pictured above. odly the smaller in length fish are a little chunkier. I guess they are getting enough food in the proper size ranges.

I have been removing the smaller LMB in hopes that the forage they do not eat will grow large enough to be a respectable meal for the larger LMB. Should I be romoving some of the larger LMB along with the small ones?

Greg,

The pond is 2 acres so I guess I should take another 80 or so fish out this summer. I am going to keep track of weights from now on to be more accurate.

Thanks for all the help. I'll keep you updated on how things go.

Theo says you must first move your pond to Texas, the land of the free and home of the brave. Then add threadfin shad and tilapia. Remove small bass and stir.

I like mine shaken not stirred.

I just wish it would rain enough down here to "stir" the ponds.

Brett,

I second everything Theo said. I have/had a situation similar to yours, and the LMB are finally (slowly) starting to grow. I had to take out at least 200 9-13" LMB and stock about 100 6-9" BG to reverse the trend. I'm not finished, but it's getting better. The pond is anywhere from 3-4.5 acres, depending upon how much rain we get. Hopefully that will give you an idea of what might work.

Good luck and keep us posted!

I'd give you 6 inches of rain in the last week if I could, David. I sure didn't need it here.

an update:

I went fishing a couple weeks ago. I don't get to fish as much since Abram my son was born (he's 2 months now. His RW is 75% and his Relative height is 97% actualy those are the percentiles but I figured I'd relate it to fish). I removed 8 LMB and cought 11 lmb. Looking back I should have removed all 11 LMB oh well.

Average RW is 79%

Lowest RW was 55% a 12 incher that only weighed .8 oz....sad

odly enough the highest RW was a 12 incher that weighed 1 LB

Keeping these records has realy helped a lot with managing the population. I am able to be more objective with removal of fish. A lot of times before the records I would throw back fish that put up a good fight or were a little bigger than others. The records realy made me aware of the lack of forage and the over abundance of LMB. I know now to remove the LMB that are below the standard weight.

Good for you Brett. The first full year that we had our pond I was calculating RW on the bass that we caught. Bass RWs were low and so we stocked more forage. Year three RWs of bass are much better.

I had an interesting conversation with Bob Lusk about using RW to determine culling procedures. It's probably one of the best pond management tools available.

What you said is key - it allows you to be more objective. I use to do the same thing as you did. I threw back everything, not any more. Part of maintaining a healthy pond is knowing what to cull.

Unless you are going to money whip your pond and plan on dumping tons of Golden Shiners into the mix, I would not count on them as your saviour. In your neck of the woods, I would plan on harvesting way more bass than what has been talked about earlier. Double or triple that number ASAP! The faster you get them out, the faster you will see an increase in RW. Next, make sure that the bluegill you have in your pond are available for your bass to eat easily. If your bass are roaming around chasing down food, they are not putting on good weight.

Beautiful pic of a beautiful pond!

n8ly,

I wish I could money whip my pond (maybee some day). For now I will just have to play the trade off game. Remove more LMB and reduce catch rates of LMB. I want to keep catch rates fairly high but i'm willing to sacrifice catch rates for larger LMB. I think I have pretty modest goals. Realy all I want is to be able to catch a few 5Lb lmb and have 2-3 lb LMB be pretty common.

Are you suggesting that I remove 120-180 lbs of LMB? I was planning on removing 60 lbs of LMB this year (that is if i get a chance to fish). My new plan is to remove LMB untill I start to see RW increase which may very well be when I have removed 120-180 lbs of LMB.

How do I make sure that the BG are available to the LMB in my pond? I have quite a bit of shallow cover in the pond. Most of the cover is provided by cypress knees and roots. I would say that I have adequate shallow cover. I probably need a lot more deep structure and cover. Most of the time I see my LMB waiting in the cypress knees for a meal.

I also did not mention that I have several (3-5) CC that weigh nearly 8 lbs. With goals of a LMB fishery would it be wise to remove some of the larger CC one of which is an albino so he stays no matter what. The albino and other CC are feed trained so it would probably not be to hard to remove them.

Ric Swaim, Thanks for the compliment. the pond has always been a great place to relax and enjoy the outdoors. Also, a great place to keep busy with new projects .

Brett now why did we not talk about this at PB conf? Track the Wr there is a lag period but you will see the changes indicating if you are taking enough bass. Also you will begin to see more 4-6 inch bluegill if you are removing enough bass. Yes the big cats are competing with the bass for food, take em out to achieve your goals. Also interested in a tag gun? Fun to see if the bass are growing or not.

I dont think 3-5 feed trained catfish would be a problem to leave in. 30-50 would be a different story.

Docks and Structure that provide good shade (suspended 4x8 sheets of plywood) provide great ambush points.

Ideas for the remainder of 2008 that wont drain the pocket book:

Definitely pick up a tag gun (but dont release but 5% of your bass this fall)

Harvest lots of bass ASAP (if you do harvest too many {you wont be able too} they will bounce back bigger and better)

Bump up your feeding (use small pellets)

Brett here is the proper way to run the Wr of the new family addition.

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=77701&fpart=1

do you mean you only have 3-5 big cats in the entire pond? Then yes they will not do too much forage damage.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Yes there are only about 3-5 large catfish in the entrie pond. We have never been able to get them to reproduce and have kind of given up on them. My neighbor has stocked CC fingerlings the past couple of years but i'm sure the overcrowded LMB gobbled them up in the first few hours (I only see about 5-6 small CC at feeding time). I need to point my neighbor in the direction of this forum. His heart is in the right place but he makes a lot of poor stocking decisions. Luckily none of them can realy hurt the pond since most of the time his mistake is stocking fish that are too small. the poor guy actualy asked me if he should stock more LMB this fall. I explained the food chain and that there are too many LMB in the pond but I'm not sure he gets it yet (I don't fully understand yet, but I'm learning :)). Anyway I talked him out of stocking more LMB.

Greg,
I'm not sure my wife is ready to hang the baby from a hook yet. Those pictures are hilarious by the way.

Again thanks for all the suggestions. Now all I need is a few friends that would be willing to help me catch and eat 200 LMB. Any takers?