My fishing club has been put in charge of an old gravel pit is about 7 acres and 45 feet deep it was filled in 1974 and has mostly a sand and gravel bottom there where seval piles of sand left in the pit when it was filled and they make under water islands that are 2-6 feet deep but it does not have a heavy weed base it just grows moss with a 1/4 acre bay that is 3-4 foot with some kind of reeds growing in it 3/4 of it is has bottom that is 45 degree drop and 1/4 of it is 12-15 foot the water is real clear it has small mouth bass but most of them are 3-5 inches with only a few larger ones some 1-2 pound chanel cats a few 5-6 inch crappie some chain pickeral 12-18 inch and i was told that some walleye and perch where stocked sevral years ago but have not heard of anyone catching any of them the bulegill are all small 6 inch being the biggest mostly 3-4 it is open to the public and no boats are allowed on it My club would like to get some nice size fish perch bluegill bass walleye it realy does not matter we just want to make it better for the comunity to fish in any ideas would help full
Is there any inlet or outlet? Are you planing on stocking the pond? Can you control what fish are harvested? Are there any rough fish? Sounds like an interesting situation. It sounds like you need to improve the predator population. Large mouth bass, walleye and muskelunge are all possible additions.
20- 12" muskelunge will eat alot of small bass and Bg. Walleye can also prey heavily on BG and smb.
By inlet and outlet I am guessing you mean can we get a truck to the pit yes we can drive right up to pit easly and yes we are going to stock it and put in a fishing pier for the public the only way we can control the harvist is with creel limits and yes we can set them and have the DNR enforce them there seem to be no rough fish
Thank you for the reply
By inlet and outlet I ment a stream, crick or overflow.
Do you have any LMB? you didn't mention them but it would seem odd if you didn't have any.
Are you shooting for good BG fishing? I have heard that walleyes can reduce BG substaintialy, even remove them from a lake. But, with out a river you will not have any walleye reproduction. So stocking large walleye could have a significant and controled impact on your BG. Also increasing the size of your SMB or stocking LMB could help correct a stunted BG population. LMB would probably remove most of the SMB in 5 years.
You should evaluate the fishery. I would find a consultant, hire him, and find out the status of the fishery. In the meantime, decide how you would like the lake to be by setting goals. Once you absolutely know the status, you can figure out what needs to be done to make the lake as you want it to be. If the public still has access, you may need to figure out a way to manage that with catch limits. If you know a starting point, and have goals, you can figure out what to do to manage it.
Skuza, I was curious about having 3-5" smallies. Do you think that those smallies are a year class from your pond? Or may someone have stocked them recently?
The reason I ask is because if you're getting smallmouth bass reproduction in your pond, I believe that's pretty awesome and maybe something to foster.
An option to consider (after the proper evaluation as has been stated), is a Smallmouth lake.
Most can only dream of regularly hooking into 15-20"+ bronzebacks in your own body of water.
First let me say this is not my body of water it is in a Park and my fishing club of almost 200 members has been given the permision to stock it and manage it kind of a club project to make it a better fishiery for the public
Smallmouth do reproduce in this pit but my thoughts are smallmouth grow to slow in a gravel pit for a good public fishery I have read it takes 7 years to get a smallmouth to get to 16 inches and the pit just is not big enough to support enough of them to keep up with the public romoving them and catch and release lake is not the goal we want fish kids can catch and keep
Below is a part of an email i recived from a fish farm this sounds like a good idea to me but then again it was a sales man that sent it to me any thoughts on if this will help?
To reduce the number of small bream/sunfish in the pond, preferably by increasing predation. Adding 1-2 pound largemouth bass will not solve the problem, again because they are typically too small to effectively prey on the dominant sunfish. I would recommend a heavy stocking of hybrid striped bass, a species that is especially voracious at preying on smaller bream/sunfish and is not constrained by reproductive energy requirements and stunting problems. As this species will not reproduce in your ponds, and have a lifespan of 5-7 years, they act as a finite population control method on those stunted bream/sunfish.
Skuza, I'm no pro on this, but I'm trying to retrieve my Lunker status so here are my thoughts.
Normally HSB would not be considered an ideal predator for bream/sunfish because they normally inhabit different spectrums of your pond. (There's a $3 word to describe these disparite tendencies but I'm too lazy to go back and look) Which is to say HSB like to cruise around open deep water and attack their prey. That's is why you can find HSB and SB busting shad early and late in the day out in the middle of a lake. Bream/sunfish tend to inhabit much more shallow and structure related areas of your pond, areas not normally associated with HSB hangouts.
The interesting thing about your situation is the clarity and depth of your pond. Seems like you might have a greater probability of HSB predation of bream in your situation than in a more turbid and shallow enviroment.
Those are my thoughts, the pros will better answer your question.
Thanks Gumboot I am always a little scared to take the advice of a salesman and additional feed back always helps and knowing nothing on the subject i need all the help i can get
TyW33 there is no inlet or outlet it is just spring feed
I have been looking into BG populations over the last couple days and here is one interesting thing I learned.
When BG experience high predation young in life they try to grow large quickly and then sexual mature.
If BG experience high mortality through out life then the pressure is to spawn before they get eaten, being large doesn't pay off.
So from a managment perspective the ideal BG growing lake would have a dense predator population to eat age 0 to age 3 BG (0"-4"). But, it would only have limited fishing pressure on the larger fish.
Thanks for the reply Skuza. I understood that it was not your personally owned body of water, but I'm sure that you'll take pride in it.
I hear what you're saying about the need/desire for good fishing for the public. Best of luck.
Skuza,
In response to your post about the email you received from a fish farm salesman, have a look at the following links. In the first link, look for the post by Bob Lusk on 1-25-05 8:07 AM. In the second link, see the post by Bruce Condello on 1-26-05 2:54 PM.
Crappie Link Crappie Link Given the right conditions, HSB are effective predators in controlling sunfish populations so I would think your salesman is giving you good information.
Russ