Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking Skinny LMB in old pond

My wife's grandfather dug a 17-acre pond back in 1955. Over the years, the pond has filled in somewhat and has been reduced in size, but the thing that puzzles me is the abundance of skinny bass.

The black crappie are as fat as pigs and the bream are fairly nice-sized, but the bass are pathetic. I just had the levee re-done and my pier restored and allowed the folks who were working on the pond to fish it for a few days. They reported to me that even the young bass look skinny.

The guy who did the levee work said the pond apparently has little structure where the forage fish can hide, so I visited the local Home Depot and collected three truck loads of Christmas trees that did not sell.

I plan to sink them in the old pond and stuck a few in our new 2-acre pond that was just stocked for the first time last month.

From all my research, I believe that adding fathead minnows would be non-productive since they would disappear in a little while, but I need input to confirm my idea.

Any suggestions? The guy who worked on restoring my levee pushed several trees into the pond, so I hope that helps some.

It sounds like from the information provided, you have the classic crowded bass issue... If you want to grow fatter bass you need to reduce competition between the bass by removing them, as you make progress you can start adding additional forage(BG, GSH, TFS). Also, I would keep every crappie caught out of the pond regardless of the size they are.

I have the same problem with the skinny bass. David D. told me the same thing as CJ is telling you keep all the ones you catch. In a 17 acre pond you may have 100's and 100's of them. I believe David told me anything 12 inches and smaller get rid of. And CJ is right I would start keeping some of those crappie as they are also competing for your forage fish. Your right about the FHM they would only be a very temp fix. If your not catching any BG or SF out of your pond in the sping I would load that baby up with a bunch of 3 to 4 inch BG big enough so they don't get eaten and let them baby's spawn, spawn, spawn! From what the guys have told be on this site BG will spawn up to 4 to 5 times in a summer. If you do all of this your bass will start to faten up. Course I am no expert so when I say a bunch of BG I am not sure how many you would need in a 17 acre pond. I will leave that to the experts here.

Chandler, I'll bet that you aren't catching any small BG, correct? If that's the case, then that's another indicator of a LMB heavy pond - they are eating themselves out of house and home.

Man, out of a 17 acre pond, he's going to have a hard time making a dent by rod and reel in that LMB population.

You can help the bass by stocking threadfin shad, assuming that's legal in your state. Then a couple years from now when you have more bass in the 18"-plus size range you could stock gizzard shad to help the big bass get even bigger. Only stock shad if you don't care at all about bluegill size; but if bass are your passion, shad will help. Along with threadfins now, you could stock a handful - emphasis on handful, no more than five or six I would say - of flathead catfish, if you can get them a couple pounds or better each in size; it would take them a little while perhaps to get to the functional size (probably five pounds or better), but once they hit the size where they could eat the smaller largemouth, they would thin them out quickly, and keep them thinned. They probably won't spawn successfully in a pond (you don't want them to anyway); but they will get huge, and eat a lot of fish; I would never recommend them in a pond much smaller than yours. Although I have fished a couple times a small (maybe two acres) pond near me that has a few flatheads in it, and the second time I fished it I caught a LMB that would've gone between four and five pounds. The bass are anything but crowded in that pond. If you can't get flatheads, there are a few hatcheries that sell blue catfish, but make sure to buy ones at least a couple pounds in size.

I don't know if they would make it in LA, but if you were a little further north you could stock a few tiger muskie, which get big but not as big as a flathead and also only live four or five years since they're a hybrid, and are sterile.

Howdy, Chandler, sounds like a nice place you've got. As CJ wrote, it certainly sounds like you've got "Green carp syndrome", in which the bass have basically eaten themselves out of their food supply. The overcrowding of small bass results in very intense depredation upon the BG and crappie, leading to excellent panfish sizes, but few BG or crappie are reaching sizes to be prefered forage for larger bass.

You are truly blessed to have a body of water of this magnitude, but its size also makes corrective action difficult.

In my experience, the most imperative management priority at present is to remove as many bass as possible, pronto, by whatever means you can divise/afford. Fishing tournament with friends? Church group[s]? Boy Scouts? Shocking? A few days off work in the spring, with a couple buckets of minnows and you could make a big dent yourself, I would guess. Whatever it takes to remove several hundred of these eating machines.

Once you get the bass numbers down, you can work on increasing the forage base-but it'll be hard to make much progress without getting the bass numbers down. As Walt noted, shad can make a big difference, but the bass you've got will really hammer them at the size typically stocked, and they're not cheap.

Chandler, adding forage won't help much till the small LMB population is greatly reduced. Adding a high production forage species, even tilapia, would just delay the inevitable. Sooner or later, a LOT of LMB will need to be removed.

I have the same problem at my parent's 7.5 acre pond in mchenry county IL.

The homeowner's association flat out refuses to do selective harvest. My dad has taken it on his own, and is just dumping stunted bass in the woods behind his house when nobody's looking, but he can't make a big enough dent by himself.

What about a tiger muskie?
2 of those in a 7 acre pond? sound about right? i know i have to keep the biomass down, but they are sterile, right? they'll knock the bass population down long enough for big bass to grow, then they will die out, and the big bass will solve the problem.

anything wrong with my math here?

Hello skinnybass and welcome to Pond Boss. Thanks for jumping in and posting, that's what makes this site work... well besides all the sofware, hardware, moderators, site sponsors, Bob Lusk, Mike Otto... jeez I should have stopped while I was ahead.

Anyhoo, hang on for an expert opinion.

Hey, thanks for the warm welcome.
I've got a little experience in biology and hydrology, maybe i can give a little more detail. plenty of vegetation, ~7acre surface area, most of the lake is at 12 ft deep, with a few wells (one is 40 ft deep, but only about 10ft around, a black chasm that goes straight down).
Solid limestone underneath the dirt & gravel, makes for crystal clear water (and slow fish growth, from what i understand...)
The bass and BG are plentiful, BG have been getting bigger and bigger. Calico Crappie as well, although not numerous. They actually get pretty big.
As far as i can tell from my samples, the minnow spieceies are yelowfin topminnows (thank you handy dandy audubon ID book...) there may be more species as well. They stocked a few sterile carp a few years back to manage the algae, i think there is only one left alive.
Have also caught a rock bass in there, although i doubt the population is strong. One of the neighbors apparently caught a 35" northern in Fox Lake and carted it home, it was last spotted this summer, identified by its one eye (the mythical lake beast, Onezey).
There is a natural spring underneath the deep wells that brings in more water, and maintains the temp at the bottom of the lake at about 50 degrees year round. Plentiful rotting biomass for o2 in the form of cottonwood leaves covering shorelines, and few pieces of cover (pallets and wire spools) have been added to complement the natural cover of weeds and creekbeds.
the bass, though, just get smaller and smaller every year. I talked to the H. Association, totally against my fairly ambitious goal of taking 95lbs of bass biomass out each year until the population stabilizes with more bigger fish. They were slightly receptive to the idea of tiger muskie, although they are afraid it will destroy the population of their lake.
so that's all i have

I got called in on a pond similar to this, not as large. The problem was multiple causation, that all intertwined. I think the foundation or base problem was a lack of cover for the forage fish. I noticed there were very few small anything. No small bg's, no small bass. No cover for them. At first I tried adding forage fish. This was a temporary fix at best, I was just feeding the starving population. I then started over and began establishing forage fish cover. Aquatic plants along the shore, submerged brush and rock piles, And I started adding more forage, crawdads, bullfrogs and lots of bluegill. It took a few years but I finally crossed the cannabalization point, where small bass and bluegill began to survive a season. I did not have to remove one single bass and the average catch weight and girth went up immediately after that. Now I have fat bass, a lot of them and forage fish everywhere. It would not hurt to thin them out, I would just cringe throwing them out in a field to rot. I don't thin, I put more food in.

Pond Frog:
Thanks for the response. While I agree that more cover is good cover, I think that the plentiful weeds have that mainly covered (no pun intended). A lot of the bottom of the lake is thick with weeds, especially in the heat of the summer. I'm actually going up to ice-fish thursday, and i'll get a good look at the bottom with a fishcam to confirm that they are still there in winter too.

And the bass are tiny. That's the big problem. The biggest ones have HUGE heads and tiny bodies. Caught one on the ice last year on a tip-up and a roach, it's head was big enough to rob 3 roaches from a line of tip-ups, with all of the minnows still in his gullet....the body, though, was skinny at best, anorexic at worst.

The minnows are really small species, and they swarm the shorelines, there are millions of them. Would bringing a bigger minnow species in help?

I still think that the end-all is going to be the homeowner's association buying a tiger muskie from a hatchery, and allowing it and Onezey to do their dirty work on the tiny bass for a few years.

Any thoughts? Thanks for the feedback!

I do think, though, That this weekend I'll take the opportunity to put a few stumps under the ice to saturate and sink before spring. More structure is good structure, that is true.

Tiger musky may help. I would only use tiger musky and not northern pike though. Northern pike may reproduce and you don't want that...

If you stock tiger musky, keep it around 1 fish per acre. So you'd want about 7. Make sure the fish you stock are at least 12" long to avoid being eaten by the bass. There is a likelihood that lone northern in there already may eat your tigers before they get much size to them. Let's hope not...

The reason you crappie are doing so well if that the small abundant bass are keeping their numbers in check. As the bass population thins out, you can expect the crappie population and other panfish numbers to grow but not get as big as before. More competition between panfish means decreased growth rates. So if you are looking for improved bass fishing, then add the tigers. If you're more focus on the panfish, leave them out. Take a look at this link: http://www.bassresource.com/fish_biology/pike.html Just substitute tiger musky for northern pike as they essentially act the same way in ponds...

Also, be sure of the legality of stocking the tiger musky.

If you decided to add tiger musky, after 3 or 4 years they should really start to do a number to the smaller bass. As the bass numbers decline, you can expect their growth rates to increase. At this point you can consider adding an additional forage fish to the mix like golden shiners. However, getting golden shiners or any other soft rayed foraged fish to take hold in a well established pond is VERY difficult.

Along these thought lines, I was really surprised, from reading the latest PondBoss, how quickly those stumps and trees get soaked up and sink.

Awesome! Thanks.

do you think that Onezey the pike is helping out at all? Or is the lake too big for him to make an impact?

From the pic i saw he is massive, and cubby too...obviously been feeding well.

Thanks
Mike

Read the link I posted... In a 3 acre pond, 4 NP literally cleaned it dry of fish... I am sure that NP is eating a lot of bass, but probably not enough to make a dent in 7 acres.

The pond I am speaking of had the same bottom weed problem. Some knucklehead then dumped some Eur Milfoil in and that just infested the entire pond bottom to top, side to side. But with all those crappy weeds it still did not provide cover for my forage. I had to wipe all that out as a first step. The bass actually utilized the bottom weeds as ambush points and ate everything up. Same symptom on LMB also, big head, little body, skinny as Olive Oil. Plus I think with Crappie they are competing with the LMB for the same nonexistant food source. My biggest gain was putting marginals in. Plants right along the edges. Bass could not get there and it created a safe haven for all of the little guys. It took me 3-4 years to see appreciable results. I could never introduce a pike, muskie or anything like that out here. Good luck either way, sounds like a project for sure.

hmmmmmmmmmmm. Now that is interesting. Same weeds, same swarming minnows.

Ok, i'm throwing cover in the lake deep and shallow this weekend, and I'll tell my dad to sink his xmas tree under his dock. Most of the shore is taken up with property, so the plantlife lining the shore might not be an option. But i'll see what i can do. You mean like reeds and cat tails, right?

Some pond managers on here that regularly stock pike or muskie recommend two to four per acre; I would say with a lake that size, you would need to stock at least two 12" or larger tiger muskie per acre, taking into account the good possibility that at least a couple will get eaten by the big pike, for them to make a dent.

Years ago I stocked 20 - yes, 20 - 12" northern pike into a pond that might be three acres total in size, and which at the time was morbidly overpopulated with green sunfish; I stocked 40 yearling LMB that same year, and a year later 75 6" walleye (the pond has lots of water over 20' feet deep, some holes over 30'). The pond is an old phosphate pit and thus very fertile, so it probably carries more fish per acre than the average pond; but the pike didn't decimate the population of the pond, anything but; within three or four years the pond had some of the best LMB fishing, and bluegill fishing, of any pond I've ever fished, very large specimens of both species, and several of them. A 36" NP was caught somewhere around that time, and a couple years after that a nine-pound walleye was caught from the pond. I wish I could fish that pond now.

Stumps are great they take decades to decompose. Christmas trees, maybe gone except for trunk which then lays flat after a couple of seasons. I uses a lot of stumps, and rockpiles deep. On the marginals I use creeping primrose, rushes and grasses. I take cattails out, I never put them in. Most of the forage fish I see now are in the shallows. Before there were none. If you have a lot of stumps pile them and decrease depths. To the point where some might stick out of water. The only thing I have to be careful of is willows. They have to be completely dead as every part of them contains rooting hormones. I had a 4 inch branch float up and root on my embankment. Won't make that mistake again. I also use old 15 gallon black nursery pots, with bottoms cut out, in clusters of three at different depths. I anchor them down by filling them with a couple of inches of mud or rocks. They last forever.

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Look at the archive on structure.
http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92463#Post92463

I'm going to have to be creative, most things will have to fit through a 10" hole in the ice.

I'm making something right now out of concrete posts and pvc. It will be long and narrow, but will provide plenty of shelter for forage. I'll put 10 of them throughout the lake.

I'll also come back up in spring to put some bigger structures in with some 5g allon buckets, bottoms cut out and 3 or 4 fitted together, with spikes of 1/2 inch pvc sticking out in bunches (like big, plastic hedgehogs) off the sides. Just have to find a way to cap off the pvc...since little kids swim this lake, i'd hate to see someone get impaled. Maybe a slat of cedar around it to bing it all together would work.

Also....there are a few pallets down there already, i could drop in cinderblock constructions on and around those.

see what you did? now you got my carpenter mind on. Looks like i'll be hammering away between chasing tip[-ups this weekend.

Thanks guys!

Welcome aboard Skinnybass!

While most people have been giving suggestions on how to improve your bass, keep in mind that a few folks here would actually LIKE to have your problem. By stockpiling bass, you get yourself a trophy BG and crappie pond and easy to catch (though small) bass. It's actually the one good way you can pull off a successful crappie pond, because crappie tend to overpopulate and stunt when the owner is managing for big bass, which generally means too few bass to control the crappie as a rule.

With that in mind, if you enjoy fishing for panfish and like to catch lots of fish, your problem is actually a blessing. Those overcrowded, skinny bass are giving you the gift of great panfish due to the predatory control from the bass as well as lots of bass fishing action because they are always hungry.

Bass crowded ponds can be a blast to fish, and with the size of your pond, it might be worth keeping the goals in line with what has happenned all on it's own. In your situation, assuming I was going to continue the pond down the bass heavy road, I would probably consider stocking yellow perch and redear sunfish for additional fun angling options.

Skinnybass (funny username...hope you get to have that changed in a couple years ;)), the last issue of PondBoss mag had a short illustration and article about a creative way of setting tree structure over ice. Basically you have your hole, your tree, a rope, and this weight. You plunge the weight, using rebar, into the pond bottom, set it and the anchored rope will keep the tree in place when the ice melts, and until it settles to the bottom, almost exactly where you placed it. Pretty cool idea. Check it out.