Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Finally getting started.

Well, my family finally got our house sold so we are moving to a house with a pond. The pond is roughly .5-.75 acres and is extremely bass heavy. Other than one 14 inch female sitting on a bed this spring, the biggest bass i have seen was maybe 10 inches. There are literally hundreds of 6-8" bass. Here is my plan of action:

This fall:
1) Remove as many bass under 10 inches as possible with a goal of 75.
2)Add 100 4-6" bluegill so there is a good spawning population in place in the spring. There are already some very good sized bluegill in there from the overpredation by bass.

In the spring:
1) Add minnows (fathead and bluntnose). Goal of 20 pounds. The bluntnose will be wild-caught.
2) Add 25 8-10" LMB to increase genetics.

Any thoughts on this plan? I know some people will be against the wild-caught part but it is something I want to try. Also, it may not be neccessary to add the LMB in the spring but I had a long talk about bass-genetics with a biologist that worked with a program in Texas called Share Lunker and genetics do indeed play a large role in bass size and level of aggression. Knowing that, I would like to dilute the stunted gene pool as much as possible.

Congrats on the sale and upcoming move, lmoore! What a great opportunity ahead of you!

I am by no means qualified to offer advice, but am pretty decent at parroting things I've heard. In my reading here, it seems that your plan to remove bass is definitely a key part of the remodeling of your pond if growing bigger bass is the goal. However, one of the consistent pieces of advice here is to take out enough bass that you think you've taken too many, then take out another 30% or so! If you truly have hundreds of stunted bass, I am guessing that 75 will not be a big enough number to help you achieve the goal of larger bass, and that you may want to take out many more, particularly given the size of your pond.

I think your plan to add to the forage base is an important key, so the addition of minnows makes sense. You already know that most people here will advise against wild caught fish for a variety of reasons, including the big risk of disease or parasites, but you should seriously consider that risk to your investment in fish.

I'm sure you'll get plenty of useful thoughts and advice on your plan and hope I don't get banned for offering stupid thoughts on a subject I still know nothing about!

Thin the old gene pool profusely before adding new genetics, or you will just have new bass competing for the same relative lack of forage that has kept your old bass skinny.

FWIW, listening to Cody has left me with the strong impression that bluntnoses aren't available except from the wild.

Agree that thinning the gene pool is extremely important prior to introducing anything else and 75 might be a good start. However, continued culling is equally important in maintaining a balanced pond. Bass are eating machines. I would do everything possible to eliminate small bass totally. Don't worry, you can't do it. They will become hook shy and tough to catch. In a bass heavy pond, that 14 inch female may be 5 years old.

Let body condition be your culling guide on larger fish. Go to http://www.lakework.com. That's Greg Grimes website and he has a printable Relative Weight Index(RW) that will tell you how to assess the body condition. He also has some fishing logs that will prove invaluable when keeping up with your results.

When you finally restock, add bass that are 8 to 10 inches long and tag them so you don't cull them. You won't need many, maybe 10 in a pond that size.

I think you will need to add bluegill that are at least 6 inches long. A 12 inch bass lives on 4 inch bluegills.

Good plan and good advice above. I would try to remove 30 lbs of LMB after factoring in the added LMB. If the 25 new LMB will weigh 20 lbs then before you add them take out 50 lbs of existing LMB. This advice assumes the pond is .75 acres and is extremely LMB crowded. If the size is smaller or not quite that LMB crowded then reduce the weights. You will need to continue to harvest LMB as DD1 noted.

Thanks for the advice guys. I had considered just removing any and all bass I could catch but I wasn't sure if that was a good idea or not. Getting as close as possible to starting over with them might be the best option from the sounds of things. Bigger bluegill, number the same or should I go more/less than 100? As far as the bluntnose go, that was just something I have had in mind to try out and I was going to trap them since I don't know of any place near here that sells them. I may or may not do that. Thanks again for the advice guys.

IMO, stocking bluntnose into a bass heavy pond or even a moderately bass heavy pond will be a waste of a lot of time and energy. Unless you have a lot of very shallow water refuge areas. Now if you were starting over, I'd say go for it. However, I have never been able to get bluntnose to establish themselves in a pond that already has bass present...

I agree with CJBS about the use of bluntnose. I've worked with them a lot and know their habits well. I am working on an article about them in PBoss mag, possibly in 2010. It will be difficult at best to maintain any minnows in a 0.75ac LMbass pond. Golden shiners would be a better option. You also might consider adding RES to your fish mix. The sunfish types will be the backbone of a LMB fishery in IA. If you use gshiners, stock bigger ones that are around 5"-6" or larger which could be hard to find. they will have a whole lot better chance of surviving than bluntnose or FHM. Neither get big enough to avoid predation from 6"-10" bass.

IMO the addition of a few of a good strain of northern LMB will suit your needs well. I would use pellet raised LMB. They will grow fast and big for you and not put as much predation pressure on the forage base since a large percentage of their diet is pellets. Why work when you get free handouts?. If it were my pond after the initial new bass stocking, I would annually or every 2 yrs add a few more pellet trained LMB to replace 1:1 thinner bodied bass you remove. This will gradually convert your bass fishery toward more pellet eating, fast growing bass that will be aggressive bitters, at least for awhile. You might want to mark the pellet trained bass with fin or dorsal spine clips so you can recognize them. Fins and spines will eventually regrow, but will have wavy or slightly deformed rays/spines.

Thanks you for the post.
Hi guys, Im a newbie. Nice to join this forum.
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Welcome aboard Jessica. A lot of things discussed here are dependent on location. Where are you?

Hey guys,
Wanted to update this situation. We started out by changing the landscape a little bit. There were small trees and bushes all around the pond so we cut them down and put some in the pond in hopes of helping the small BG recruitment. Then, I started taking out LMB. I started with the 75 I had planned above, however, my brother and I decided to try a little gene change. In an unadvised move we added another 10 bass in the 2.5-5 pound range ( approximately 30-40 pounds). The fish were from a nearby pond where they were growing like crazy. A lot of that probably had to do with the available food, but we decided to hope for good genetics also. To offset the additional biomass, I removed another 50 bass from our pond. We then went back and added about 150 4-6" BG along with another 300-400 1-2" BG. I've also been periodically adding minnows from a wild source. Predominately the Long Nose Dace, which CJ helped me ID in another thread. These minnows won't reproduce well in a pond setting, but they should serve as a supplemental food source for the other fish. I've also added 100 or so crayfish at a couple points during the year and added 4 SMB with the hopes that they can provide an occasional (like once per summer) surprise catch. Our methods were definitely not the reccomended way of going about things so we'll see how things turn out when next summer comes around. We did have some successfull BG spawns this year and I still see schools of small BG (<1 inch)along the shore. Hopefully things are set now that the pond can balance out a little bit. We're starting a culling program next year of any fish 6-10 inches and will move that to 6-12 inches the following year. Thanks for all the advice guys.