Starting stocking a 14 acre dam with LMB threeyears ago as the dam winter killed in the late 2000's. Somehow GSF and bullheads got into the dam before putting bass in. Put 8 plus inch bluegills in there and fathead minnows for the first year to spawn. Then later followed with LMB from neighbors pond. Left alone the last two years...

Recently fished it and caught some 6-8 inch bass and some smaller ones 2-4 inches. Also caught a couple of the original bass i stocked in there and they were healthy.

My next move to prevent the bass from being stunted in their later years is potentially stocking Golden Shiners into the dam. My question would be what size should i get from 1-4 inch available. My other question is would be better off creating a bait pond instead of buying food all the time? There is a half acre dugout that is spring fed with no fish in. Thinking of throwing Fatheads and Golden shiners in there and then seining the bait pond to add fish into the bigger dam.

Thoughts???

How many BG did you put in pond before adding LMB?

I'm no expert, but I'll throw in my 2 cents from the knowledge I've absorbed on this forum. If you're stocking forage (such as shiners and fathead minnows), they usually end up being expensive snacks if you have predators already established in your body of water. I would go with the biggest size GSH you can get, to hopefully avoid predation and spawn for you. If you have a bait pond that you can utilize, I would definitely do that. You might be ok with stocking 4" shiners, if most of your bass are under 8", but I think that is still cutting it close. Bass can handle some pretty large bait.


And yes, that would be super helpful to know this information too.

45 (3 man limit) all big mature bluegills tho

Were you able to tell if the BGs have spawned?

In a lake that size 45 adult BG will take a while to provide for forage. Was everything killed off except for GSF and bullheads?

A little of topic, but I know a guy that used to fight bullheads. Drained and rotenoned a pond trying to eradicate them. They came back. Now he has embraced them as a forage source and is growing huge fish. Just saying....

What was the sex ratio??
As-in, do you know for sure you didn't stock for example 42 males and 3 females?

When I was a kid and I spent summers in Mississippi with my grandparents we used to fish their catfish ponds over there all the time. They always ended up with Bullheads in them (we called them mudcats.) We considered them trash fish. I don't know why we never thought about stocking some bass in there just to get after the tiny bream and bullheads. My uncles had 2 bass/bream ponds within a mile of there we could have simply caught a few out of and transferred.

I have to agree with snipe when questioning the sex's of the bg. At my pond most of the bg I catch are males. It changes at times where I will catch some females but most of the time it is the males that are biting. So, unless you checked the sex of the bg that were added to your place i would suspect most of them were males. You might need to make it back to the other pond and see if you can catch some females to transfer.

Just a thought, but in the grand scheme of things, 45BG in a 14 A enclosure is almost like not stocking any at all, no?, only about 3 per A, not a professional but isnt that a minute fraction of the recommended stocking rate? Just trying to learn something myself.

You have already learned.

Sexing BG

From the archives.

https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=258505#Post258505