Hello,

I've been lurking and reading posts here for awhile now, but just got around to posting. I was hoping I could seek some expert opinions/advice on my pond.

My pond is just under 1 acre I believe and it is probably close to 100 years old if not more. It's an old farm pond. Supposedly the pond was originally built at 20+ feet deep at its deepest point. I last measured its deepest point at arount 15 feet. The average depth is probably around 6 feet deep. There are no weed beds and very little structure except for some old bridge posts and whatever tree limbs have fallen in from the surrounding woods. The pond is stocked with largemouth bass, bream, warmouth, grass carp, and an overabundance of turtles. The grass carp are going on around 10 years old now, and we were told when we stocked them that they would only live around 7. The number of them seems to have decreased but there are some still there and they are very large. My biggest concern is with the largemouth bass. Any weekend during the warmer months, I can go and pull 10-20 healthy 1-2 pound bream out of the pond, and probably around 5-10 bass. However, the bass that I pull out are always under 15 inches and no more than 1.5 pounds. Around 30 years ago a 10 pound bass was caught out of the pond, the largest ever "recorded" from it. Around 10 years ago, a 6 pounder was caught, the second largest. About 5 years ago a 2 pounder was caught. Ever since, I have never seen any bass over 1.5 pounds and I fish this pond every weekend all summer long, from the months of May until August/September. A new neighborhood was recently built near the pond about 5 years ago or so, so I always thought that the bass population may just be decreasing and the pond is just being overfished by trespassers. After some thought on the situation, I am thinking more and more that the bass may just be stunted and I might have an overpopulation of fish in the pond. Could I be right on my assessment that the pond may be overpopulated and the bass are stunted? If so, what can I do to fix the situation and grow some bigger bass? At this point, I am pulling everything I catch out, hoping I'm right and that maybe that will help a little. As far as I am aware, I am one of the only people that fish this pond, but of course we have found traces of trespassers around the pond, so I wouldn't be surprised if other people are fishing it.

Thanks for the help,
Steve

Steve, welcome to the posting portion of the forum! We're glad you jumped in.

If you've been lurking for very long, I'd bet you already know the answer to your question and are looking more for confirmation.

First, if there are trespassers, any advice given could be wrong without knowing what damage they may be doing to the pond dynamics.

That said, it sounds from the excellent description you provided you probably are overpopulated with LMB and need to remove any Bass (LMB) that look skinny with big eyes/head compared to their body along with a lot of 10-14 in LMB...I'd say around 150-200 given your pond size.

The turtles can go or stay, your choice. As Mr Lusk like to say, any fish a turtle can catch, deserved to be eaten (or something to that effect).

Other than the LMB appearing to fit the classic overpopulation scenario, it sounds like everything else is in good shape. I'd bet removing the LMB as suggested this spring will get your pond back on track in a few years or less.

As for what to remove in the following years will depend on how well the removal goes and what your creel survey let you get a picture of. Keep records of sizes caught to see if any size class is missing. Regardless, plan on removing around 50 to 100 bass per year every year to help maintain your balance one it's restored.

If I lived closer, I'd volunteer to help 'cull the herd' for you!

As Rainman has already said, from your description, it definitely sounds like it is bass crowded...the big bream along with an over abundance of smaller bass are usually a dead giveaway of that. The fact that you still have a bunch of those bigger adult bream left is good. Once you get the overabundance of bass taken care of, those bigger "breeder" bream will help get your population of smaller "forage" bream back up to where it needs to be...and that is what those smaller bass will need to grow bigger.

Get a bunch of friends over one weekend this spring, catch a bunch of those little bass, and have a nice fish fry

I appreciate the responses. Sounds like my assumptions are correct. I started to keep track of my catches last year, but ended up losing track of them on paper. I will definitely start it again this year and keep up with it and see if I can notice any change in future years. I'd like to get this pond back on track and see some decent bass come out of it. Guess I'm going to have to do some extra fishing this year to get some of the bass out!

Quickly sounds typical bass crowded. Pull bass not sure about the rec. above for 150-200 for a 1 acre pond doubt you can carry half that amount. Point stil the same though if you want improved bass growth limit the number. See other thread on bass genetics might be worth stocking back a few pur genetic bass into the mix, tag them so you know not to pull them out. Good Luck.

If you can consistently catch 1-2 pound bream(sunfish), there are many on here who would be quite envious! Not very many people on here have grown 2 pound sunfish... Could you post of few of the bigger bream you've caught from your pond? They sound impressive! If you want big bass go for it, but to have a pond that produces 2 pound sunfish is very impressive in my book!

I don't have many pictures, but here are two pictures of 2 stringers of probably about 10-12 bream each. These are definitely not the biggest I've caught from the pond but these were pretty good sized. Probably hard to tell size from the pictures, but only pictures I can find.



And just to give an idea of the bass I catch, here's a pic of a 15" 1.5 lb and then of one of just another random bass.

Steve, those bass look awfully familiar. Are you sure you didn't catch them out of my pond?

Those are some beautiful CNBG! I know you want big bass, but man having quality coppernose like that is great... See if you can catch some nice ones and get individual fish in pics to post in the sunfish section of the forum. I know many members will love to see some nice CNBG like that!

I would be careful about catching and eating very many CNBG of that size. They are your brood stock and, at that size, safe from predation.

We had the same problem and had it shocked, solution was to start by taking out bass, after two years of taking out 250+ bass each of the last two years, they have finally began to grow, just fish the mess out of it, keep every bass you catch, they will grow and then the beauty of it, the spawn of the stunted fish will actually eventually be the big boys and girls of the lake.

Those pics verify bass crowded to me. Bass are long and lean. Yes indeed pretty CNBG.

Thanks guys.

Dave, I've thought about that, but I've been consistently catching those year after year, so I didn't think it was too much of a problem. I'll keep a close watch though and make sure the numbers don't go down, because as much as I want bigger bass, I definitely don't want to lose those CNBG as they are what fills my family's stomachs and freezers up each summer.

If I fish the pond like crazy for the next couple of years and I start to see the bass size increase, do I continue to keep everything I catch, even the "bigger" bass, or at that point do I start releasing those bass that are bigger than I'm catching now?

Believe me sbtgrfan, when I first visited this forum, all I had was bass that looked exactly like yours in my 6 acre pond. I listened to the experts on this forum and now they are growing like crazy!! Keep accurate records and do as they say, I took out about 250 pounds of fish per year. I still catch plenty, but they are MUCH bigger average weight. Happy fishing! The boys on here are the bomb!!
Mark

As I've read many times here, it's all goals. If your goal is big bass, you need to thin the herd of small bass; but... In a pond that size, you won't be able to grow many truly large bass and those CPBG are something special. If it were my pond, I wouldn't change a thing except whatever it took to ensure I continued to have CPBG like those in it. When I built my big pond, I thought I wanted big bass. Now I go there hoping to catch big bluegill.

I agree with the last post. Those BG are really dandies. As far as eating though and also removing some bass. If you fillet some 11-12 inchers and mix with the gills you are helping both ends. We have seen our size bluegill drop off in the last couple of years after taking out a lot of bass. The bass are big enough to take about anysize bluegill they want. Of course our biggest are like runts next to yours!