Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Minimum size pond for a great LMB fishery?

I'm defining a great LMB fishery as one where you can fish fairly regularly and expect to catch 3 - 5 lb fish with an occasional 5 - 8 lb fish. I assume that would be unusual in a 1/10 acre pond, and not too likely in a one acre pond. It seems to me that creating and maintaining a great bass pond under 4 or 5 acres would be difficult. I'm basing these thoughts only on what I've read here and I have no experience to draw on. I know Cecil has raised giant fish in small waters, but I'm not thinking in terms of maniacs.

This question came to me because I'm working on two ponds, one with RES as the target and the other with RES and Warmouth. Am I wrong to think that it would be better most of the time for folks with small ponds to target these smaller species? I know Bruce grows lunker BG, but again, I'm talking about normal people, not maniacs.

Any thoughts?

GW for most pond owners (not necessarily the PB crew) the answer is as you stated. That is because of the level of management required. Some State Agency pond mgt books suggest for under 1 acre that you consider CC and HBG or HBG and LMB (LMB only for FX control) or BG and CC. The point being that it is hard to have lots of large LMB in one acre and much more likely to have an out of balance LMB pond. It is a numbers game. If you have a fertile LMB/BG pond that can carry 400 lbs per acre then 100 lbs should be LMB. That is , in a balanced population, only a few 3-5 lb LMB (guess 12). Of that 12 based on standard catch data half may never bite a lure. So that makes 6 catchable LMB of that size. How often over a year are you going to be able to catch even one of those bigger LMB. You will be able to catch numbers of 12 in LMB . This gives you an idea of the challenge.

ewest, Using your formula, I may have 60 3-5 pound LMB in my 5 acre pond. That seems like a small number for 50 acre feet (16,000,000 gallons of water). Each of these fish would theoretically have over 260,000 gallons of water to themselves and their prey.

As long as you have lots of forage why couldnt you have this LMB heaven in a 1 acre pond? I have a one acre pond and have caught (1) 9.5 (3) 8#s (2) 7#s a bunch of 4 to 6 pounders and some smaller ones. I have stocked CNBG and i mean i have a ton of them! I have several different kind of bluegill, crappie, catfish, tilapia, golden shiners, fat head minnows, F-1s and HSB .I feed aqmax 600 every night. My pond is close to 40 years old. 17 feet at the deepest but majority is 5 to 8 feet deep. Sits on a little bit of a hill, few trees, and runoff from 40 acres of hay pastures and cows. No aeration.(will have this summer). My water exchanges alot with the rains and gets alot of wind action on it. I have an awesome bloom right now but the weeds are coming in. I have seen my little brother fish one morning and catch 30 LMB from 1 to 6 pounds in 3 to 4 hours. Usually in the summer it gets real thick with coontail and im guessing that's what keeps my forage so good, plenty of places to hide? I really dont know what im doing but ive been reading this forum for 4 or more years now and i love taking care of my pond. I dont even fish but once a month maybe. I just love watching my little brother hes 28 and my friends come over and catch big fish. 3 of my friends have caught there biggest bass of there life in my pond and i think thats cool. I know my 1 acre pond is LMB heaven for 4 people atleast!

That's interesting JHFV. When is the last time you stocked fish and what did you stock? How long have you owned the pond?

Jeff, Obviously you are not in the category of most pond owners! You are part of the PB Crew.

GW lets see last fall i put in (20) 6 to 8" F-1s, (20) 6-8" HSB. This year i put in 30#s of tilapia, (15) 12 to 14" hsb and then i put up a blocking net in a cove area of my pond for 8"s Golden Shiners and 8#s of FHM. I figured if im gonna have all these damn predators i better try and grow out bait behind the net. I have owned the place for 4 years. It already had a bunch of fish in it. Im in the process of taking out the catfish and crappie. the first couple of years all i did was buy CNBG. But i bought alot of them. You should see how many little babys those little suckers can have. Like i said in my first post i dont know what im doing really but as long as i can walk down to the pond and see tons of baitfish i figured hell they got something to eat! Oh and on the age of the pond, one day when i was fixing some fence an old man stopped and introduced himself to me and we got to talking and i asked him how long this pond had been here and he said he moved here 38 years ago and it was there. I lucked out because i always wondered how old the pond was. I mean if you could have seen that fat pig 9.5#s! That fish told me that the pond had to been here for a while.

JHFV, good info...I have a 3/4 acre pond with 50 Native LMB (9-11 inches) and 18 Florida LMB (10-12 inches), 49 HSB (10-16 inches), 10 lbs Tilapia (128 fish), and 100 4-6" CNBG (stocked in Dec 07). I see lots of small CNBG in the shallows, and have lots of vegitation in the 1-3ft areas. I have been trapping out the GSF as much as possible (166 fish since Nov 07). I get LOTS of 2-4 inch CNBG in the trap.

Regarding feeding, do you only feed the AQMX 600 ? I have been watching the Tilapia feed, and even the large ones (6-8") seem to have trouble with the 600 sized food (it is a large 1/4"...almost 5/8" on some pellets). I feed a mix of AQMX 500 (3/16"), AQMX 600, and some 1/16" had from early stocking of 500 1-3" CNBG in Oct 07 that mostly went to feed the GSF that I did not knwo I had. I can tell you that the AQMX 600 is way more than 1/16" bigger than AQMX 500 (they are advertised as 3/16 and 1/4")

I was thinking of going to AQMX Largemouth (3/4" pellet) and AQMX 500 (not mixed, but fed at same time). I figure if the large Tilapia can't eat the 600, then the CNBG may have trouble too.

Is it worth trying to go around the pond through the summer throwing out 1/16 or 3/32" pellets for the baby CNBG and Tilapia?? or by feeding the big fellas a bigger pellet will that help the little ones survive long enough to then eat 500 size? My 50 native LMB are feed trained, the FL LMB are not. The HSB seem to feed quite heavily on the 600.

It may be too early in the year (and too early in pond life...only been stocked since Oct 07) to make a diagnosis, but my LMB seem to have a RW of 0.75 to 0.85. The tilapia and CNBG may have only spawned once so far....however, the Tilapia have returned to the shallows again. I did not want to remove any LMB or HSB until next year if I can keep the Tilapia and CNBG spitting out babies.

Thanks,
Darryl

You have 49 HSB in a 3/4 acre pond...Mine is 1.5 acres and I thought 15 would be too many.

You can have up to 5000 lbs. of largemouths per acre if they are feed trained, you feed them, and you aerate. However I wouldn't go above 2,500 lbs. per acre.

I've had lots of 3 to 4 lb. green carp (largemouth bass) in my .62 acre pond along with smallmouth, bluegills and yellow perch. At one time I had about 300 two to five pounders in the pond.

1,250 3lb bass in my 1.5 acre pond...DOH!

I TOLD you he was a maniac.

I'm more of a maniac than Cecil is, because I lose money doing the same crazy stuff that he makes money on.

Like I said - you guys are not normal pond owners !!! Those numbers and the State books are not for unconstrained fish nuts.

Normal pond owners do not :

growout forage using blocking nets
growout fish using RAS
add fish all the time - sometimes in large #s
treat their ponds like their children
weigh/measure lots of their fish
compute the number of gallons of water in the pond
do the things noted in the threads below

Read these and contemplate how a pond functions biologically. Then consider on a scale of 1(low) to 10 (high) whether you are an 8 , 9 or 10 wrt pushing the envelope of being a fish nut. I promise if you read these threads (even if its for the 10th time) and think a little - you will learn something new. Then tell me how many lbs of fish per acre your pond supports. How many times have you seen Bill state that most people are shocked at how few fish there are in their pond. I am often amazed at the difficulty even fish nuts have with the concept of natural carrying capacity , how fast a pond gets there and what happens if you slap Mother Nature in the face one to many times.

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthread...ite_id=1#import

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92440#Post92440

You had me at "not normal".

Okay, I'm taking a stab at it. Based on my fishing records and estimated average weights, I removed something like 10 lbs of LMB, 65 ponds of CC, and 50 lbs of BG/RES/GSH (nearly all BG). That's an estimated 125 lbs of fish removed.

I fed 300 pounds of fish food. If we assume a 50% conversion rate, that means I grew an extra 150 lbs of fish on top of what grew naturally in the pond from the natural food chain. Might we guess that Mother Nature is at least as providing as I am, and that another 150 lbs of fish grew naturally? So 300 lbs of fish grew in the pond in 2007.

Now comes the part that I can't figure without a Lusk or a Cody or a Willis. NOT ALL OF THOSE POUNDS OF FISH WERE PRESENT AT THE SAME TIME! I didn't take 125 lbs of fish out all in one day. And the 300 pounds of fish that grew? A lot of it was forage fish - Small BG eating pellets or periphyton - that was then eaten by larger fish, on up to 3 lbs LMB and 9 lbs CC. And those predators only convert at maybe a 10% rate, so if 270 pounds of forage fish grew in the pond and were eaten by predators, the latter only gained 27 pounds for their trouble.

(If I toss in 3 lbs of LMB that grew from eating pellets, I get my 300 lbs of fish that theoretically grew in the pond, making things seem neat and tidy even if it is all just a logical house of cards.)

So I'm really lost trying to figure out just how many pounds of fish are in the 1 acre pond, Eric. There had to be a fair % of the final number in to start the year with, and it seems like some additional biomass should have accrued from all the eating that went on. I'll take a really wide WAG of 200 to 500 lbs. And I won't feel bad if/when it's pointed out how far off (probably high) that range is.

Yes ARCHER i only feed the 600. All my CNBG kill the pellets as soon as it hits the water. There only 6 to 8" big. I got the 600 for the HSB.

Thanks for the reply JHFV. Most of my CNBG are in the 4-6" range which may make the 600 a little big. I have been thinking about a strategy of AQMX Largemouth and AQMX 500 only. This way I feed the really big mouths a larger meal and slow down their feeding pressure on Tilapia and CNBG. The forage fish should all do well with the 3/16" 500 pellet, and create many babies that the smaller LMB/HSB can feed on. I guess the only ones not getting fed are the 1-2" fish, but how many of them survive anyway? I figure as long as the top predators stay somewhat fed on big pellets and the baby makers are fed well, then everybody wins.