Pond Boss
Posted By: Dinsmoreoutdoors Bass size to expect in 1 acre pond - 06/22/17 01:17 PM
Is it possible to have a 3 lb bass average in a 1 acre pond? forage is CNBG,RES,GSH, and FHM`s the pond has a automatic feeder that goes off every morning, fertilized and will soon be aerated, just need to get power down to it. the pond is one acre located in FL with 15ft ledge, with 25ft channel and hole with man made cover as of now til I get grass and lilys to grow. cover includes christmas trees, concrete culvert, logs, stumps, pallets stacks. Any suggestions to get to this goal? would like to go fish and catch on average 3 lb bass with a chance of a trophy!
Posted By: beastman Re: Bass size to expect in 1 acre pond - 06/22/17 01:56 PM
How many LMB do you plan to add? I think it is possible , especially given your location. All about numbers and if you want quality over qty... How long have the other species been in the pond?

My novice opinion would be initial stocking of 30-40 good genetic LMB. I believe most all are feed trained now initially so you could add some pellets for them to help with forage population and LMB growth.
Posted By: djstauder Re: Bass size to expect in 1 acre pond - 06/22/17 02:30 PM
My pond is also 1 acre but mine is unfertilized and has very little structure. After stocking with BG, RES, CC, and LMB, my pond got LMB heavy within a few years which resulted in too many stunted LMB but some decent BG. Started feeding BG and making sure I harvest(at least) 10 lbs of 12" and smaller LMB/year unless in good condition. Jump ahead 5 years and I now have a good BG fishery (11" up to 1lb) and have LMB up to 5 lb. Also, now I remove anything less than 14" in poor condition.

My main takeaway is that, in the south where LMB overcrowding is prevalent, you've got to start harvesting LMB after the second year while trying to leave your original stockers.

Before coming to the PondBoss site, the Miss. marine biologist's recommendations was to catch 10lb/acre of LMB from an unfertilized pond and 20lb/acre in a fertilied pond. Not sure if I've every seen those recommendations on the PondBoss site tho.

Good luck,
Dan
Posted By: BrianL Re: Bass size to expect in 1 acre pond - 06/22/17 02:37 PM
You can have several 3# and larger, but average 3# sounds a little on the high side.
Posted By: RC51 Re: Bass size to expect in 1 acre pond - 06/22/17 03:49 PM
I agree with Brian I have 3 pound LMB in my 1 acre but not an average. My average is around the 15 inch mark more like 2 pounds. I have a few 3 pounders I have caught and a few even in the 4 to 5 range. The problem that starts to happen is with the bigger bass over 3 pounds is it's very hard to keep enough of the right forage in the pond for that particular size class specially if you have a bunch of 11 inchers eating all your bait.

I need a bunch of thread fin shad..... lol

RC
Originally Posted By: beastman
How many LMB do you plan to add? I think it is possible , especially given your location. All about numbers and if you want quality over qty... How long have the other species been in the pond?

My novice opinion would be initial stocking of 30-40 good genetic LMB. I believe most all are feed trained now initially so you could add some pellets for them to help with forage population and LMB growth.



I have had the CNBG, RES, in since Dec which are now around the 4-5" mark, with thousands of this years hatch CNBG from the 18 brooder CNBG I put in last spring. The FHM have been in for a year and a half. The GSH are adults I put in this spring. My bass finglerlings show up next week and there will be 80 of them, and they are feed trained. I ordered 80 hoping to end up with 50. Like I was saying like high 2# low 3#`s is what I would like to have and like yall where saying with a chance of a 5#
Posted By: Bill Cody Re: Bass size to expect in 1 acre pond - 06/22/17 04:21 PM
Dinsmore - your goal of numerous 3 lb bass is achievable. To get it with consistency and dependably you will have to closely follow the suggestions noted above.

If it were me, for my initial stocker bass, I would get them from American Sportfish or Greg Grimes at Aquatic Environmental Services in Georgia. Dependable high quality genetics. Be sure they know & understand your goals. Try hard to locate and get single sex bass; IMO females. As mentioned, The problem with mixed sex bass they reproduce too much to give you too much small bass competition which suppresses the overall growth of the bass due to too little food availability. Bass Crowding also does not help to keep a "special" balanced fishery required for your goals. As the female bass age periodically add to the population with a few new females - i.e. ladder stocking.

The other option is to use feed trained bass and harvest all the LMB offspring possible. This keeps the original stocker bass growing to your goals. The main problem with this is the trained bass reproduce and the offspring become more and more less pellet trained as annual recruitment occurs.

Your goals are achievable if you use the correct methods to reach the goals.
I have been trying the same thing with an established pond in N.E. Oklahoma. I have been reading pondboss for years and knew what I needed to do after we bought the property. The pond was stocked in 2012 and we bought it in 2014. The first trip we removed 25 bass and 10 channels.

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The next thing we did was add 250 5 inch tilapia 3 weeks after the previous fish were caught. The biggest bass we caught in the first 3 trips was 2.5 pounds. In September we caught 4 fish over 3 pounds 6 ounces. I probably went overboard with culling by keeping everything under 14 inches even with some at 110 to 120% RW. In 2015 we caught these.

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Two more

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And this year we caught these, I just hope the fish I hook3d in the gill lived. From 2014 to last year we added 250 6 inch trout in the fall and 250 tilapia in the spring. The bluegill thrived after adding tilapia we could see 100's of them along the bank. Unfortunately we are having a hard time culling as many bass because the cattle keep the water stirred up and fishing is more difficult. This pond is right at 1 acre. We may only catch 3 to 6 fish a trip but 50% that we catch are over 3lbs.

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The dream is to build a 6 acre pond in a few years, build a forage base, and stock female only bass then letting them grow for a few years. Catch rates drop significantly when you have to cull and I would like to get around that as much as possible. I couldn't imagine fishing a pond that hasn't been touched in 5 years where you don't have to worry about overpopulation.
Posted By: anthropic Re: Bass size to expect in 1 acre pond - 07/18/17 05:02 AM
Chris, nice pics! You definitely have some great LMB so must be doing right.

One caution: Holding large bass by the jaw can cause injury to them & result in slow starvation. This may not have happened at all to any of your fish, but there is a degree of risk. For the bigguns, always try to support them by the belly as well as the mouth.
Posted By: Bill Cody Re: Bass size to expect in 1 acre pond - 07/19/17 02:09 AM
Chris great examples of how a fishery can be improved for producing larger bass. Your bass are now getting big enough that you should reconsider holding them differently for photos and release. Holding fat big bass solely by the jaw pulled out can break or damage the jaw structure. See this from the PB Archives:
Previous discussions of correct way to handle large bass
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=402580

Examples of Bad Handling
http://www.laperlaranchresort.com/fishing1.html

Examples of correctly holding big bass to reduce broken jaw problems
http://bigbluegill.com/forum/topics/correct-way-to-hold-larger-bass?commentId=2036984%3AComment%3A589403&xg_source=activity

Bob Lusk Says About Handling Trophy Fish.
Do Not, under any circumstances, hold a true trophy bass by its lower jaw without supporting its body with your other hand under the rear part of its stomach. By no means, with any bass of any size, ever pull back on the jaw of your fish, as it can become quickly fractured or dislocated. That's usually a death sentence to a big fish. If you don't believe me, ask those who run the ShareLunker program at the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department. Several great specimens were donated to that program last year to spawn and help stock public lakes around the state. But, those gorgeous girls didn't get past angler handling to do what they could do to help many other lakes. They died from bad handling.
From: https://www.bassresource.com/fish_biology/hold-a-fish.html
Sorry been away, I usually hold anything over six pounds with two hands but unfortunately haven't caught anything over 5 out of our pond yet. I do have a question, I've read about using two hands for years and we do handle the fish as little as possible but our scale has a boga grip for the lip. Should I invest in a scale with a bowl to lay the fish in like in some of the videos (I believe Greg uses one in the lakework electrofishing video)? My biggest worry is injuring them with the scale.
Posted By: esshup Re: Bass size to expect in 1 acre pond - 07/20/17 04:59 AM
You could still use the boga but use a rubberized net and tare out the boga for the weight of the net.

A client had a net with a scale built into the handle. It finally went bad and he hasn't been able to find another one.
I see my topic got high jacked lol
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