I put this post up on here 5 years ago for advice...

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthrea...s=crimsondave&Search=true#Post411384

I won't rehash much of what was in the post but I had a bazillion shiners and some nice sunfish in an old cow pond. After posting my question, I ended up buying 100 3-4" florida bass from a hatchery up the road and put them in the pond. 2 years later, I had been in my house we were building for a year and I still had a bazillion shiners and saw no sign of the 100 bass I had put in. Figuring all my fish died, I got disgusted and left the pond to do what it would.

Fast forward to this week. My wife and 6 year old little girl are home all the time with this craziness going on now and I have to get out of the house. I decided to put the feeder back on the pond. I've only been feeding for 3 days so they haven't taken to going wild with it yet but they are hitting it none the less. The first day I was down there I heard what sounded like ME falling in the pond. I had thrown some "too big to eat" CCs from the lake in there just to catch for fun over the years so I figured that's what it was. I wanted to know what was still in there so today went fishing. I caught a BG (I figured out I have both bluegill and longear in the pond, btw) and put the head on a circle hook on the bottom and put the whole rest of the fish on a bigger circle hook and sent it to the bottom. It was about this time I noticed I wasn't seeing shiners to speak of.

My daughter called and wanted to come down so I got her down there and we bream fished with worms on a float. "We" were catching ok when I hooked up on a fish and handed it to her to bring in and this little fish jumped out of the water the entire time she brought it in. It was about a 3/4 to 1 pound bass. I was excited since I thought the bass had not made it. We were packing up and had all the lines in except the line with the whole fish minus the head on it and my daughter yells out "Daddy, there's a line over there and it's moving!" I pulled that line in expecting what felt like a big catfish only to have a 5 pound bass on the end of my catfish rig! Looks like they ended up doing the job after all.

I do have a couple questions for you LMB fishermen out there. I use circle hooks for about anything I fish for over a couple pounds. This bass had managed to deep hook himself with this circle hook. Thankfully, he was ok but I'm not used to that happening with a circle hook but I fish catfish mostly. Are circle hooks less effective at avoiding gut hooks on LMB? Also, how many, if any, of these LMB should I try to remove annually to keep them in balance?

crimsondave, thanks for returning to the forum. Both your posts from 2015, and this one are exciting to read. You've got quite a nice writing style, clearly conveying your thoughts and questions and adding the spice of anecdotes.

Sorry no one answered your last question 5 years ago. It was relative to catching out most of the no longer wanted LMB in a pond.

My quest to change the overload of LMB in our 1/4 acre pond started about that time (2015). These bass are northerns, mind you, not Floridas. By pounding the waters over the course of 3 summers, I lowered our bass population to the point that we're now getting sufficient BG, GSF, and YP recruitment. It is now unusual to catch or see a bass. Yes, it may now be time to let the bass numbers climb. The perch and sunfish numbers are not excessive; their sizes and quality are the best we've seen in our 10 years here.

I hope this can help a little. Granted, our pond is much smaller than yours; our bass are not the hard to catch Floridas.

I have found that circle hooks will work as they are designed when I have the rod in hand and tighten the line soon after a bass or trout takes the bait. If I've laid the rod down in order to attend to something else, often I'll find a gut hooked perch, bluegill, trout, bass, etc. on the line.

I can't offer and advice on how many bass to remove. Certainly, fishing the pond quite a number of times this year and keeping length and weight records can help you with your harvest decisions.

Thanks for the info. I just don't know much about LMB fishing. I'm one of those lazy catfish folk who throw it in and sit it down. I've used circle hooks on jugs, limb lines, trot lines, and rod & reel and don't remember ever gut hooking a catfish.