Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking Adding baby Bluegill to old, starved Bass pond

I have an old 1 acre pond on a cow field that has tons of LMB and nothing else but minnows, they're the only fish I've seen come out of it in years. The bass average 10-12 inches and you can usually about 20 fish in an afternoon, so it's fairly populated I'd guess. The pond is built on a slope and two sides are very shallow and have weeds growing in the water. There are a couple of big tree tops on the levee side.
This morning the fish truck came and I bought 200 1-3"coppernose bluegill.

Will it be alright to go ahead and put the fish in the pond, or is it very likely that the bass are going to eat just about all of the bluegill before they can even get big enough to reproduce? Should the weeds be able to provide enough cover for the bluegill?

Thanks for any input

Welcome, CC.

You're almost certain to lose the vast majority of your BG to immediate predation from the bass; it sounds as if you've got pretty good cover, so a few may make it.

Tell us more about the pond, starting with your goals for it.

My goal is to have a pond that you can bring the whole family out to and everyone can catch fish. I want good bream fishing for the kids to be able to do some perch-jerking with a worm/cricket and a cork. Good catfishing for everyone to be able to catch some good eaters. And good bass fishing for the older boys and men to enjoy. I'm not worried about having monster bass, just some in the 1-2 pound range would be nice.

The pond is on a gently sloping hill and there is about 4 acres of pasture above it where cows graze and where the water that flows into the pond flows through. What kind of effect does having cow poo/pee tainted water flowing into the pond have on it?

I suggest you do a search here for crowded bass threads. Try this one http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=92492#Post92492

You will need to remove some LMB and add some adult BG.

Survival of the small BG you mentioned will be very low (< 3 %) to spawning size would be my guess.

Welcome to the forum CC! Eric's advice is always spot on. Reduce that LMB population and add adult BG.

As far as the pasture influence on your pond, what kind of grass buffer do you have? How thick and how wide?

Cajun, more than likely, you will give the starving bass about one days food. If bass are the only fish present, they are living on eating their own spawn. Nothing wrong with them doing that and you have the usual bass heavy pond.

A couple of often quoted statistics: A bass needs 10 pounds of forage to gain one pound. Bass need food that is 1/4 to 1/3 their body size.

The usual recipe is to eliminate every bass you catch that is under 13 inches. Keep doing it until you have fat healthy bass that are hard to catch. Simultaneously, stock some 5 to 6 inch bluegill. Both bass and bluegill are spawning machines. I wouldn't stock catfish until I got the BG/bass ratio in balance.

Regarding the cows, it depends on how many cows you are talking about and the amount of runoff. Obviously, nothing can stay alive downstream from a feed lot. Chicken farms are even worse. How is the visibility/color/clarity of the water at this time? I've seen some pretty good fishing holes thanks to cows. In some parts of Ms, fertile ponds can be hard to come by. The cows, depending on several factors, could be a blessing or a problem.

Excellent advice given so far.

Do the cows have direct access to the pond? If so, fencing maybe a good idea to limit their access to the pond to a small area to prevent erosion and sedimentation of the pond which can negatively affect the fishery. Start having some fish fries utilizing your newly culled bass. MmmmmMmmmm!

In addition to adding sexually mature bluegill and culling bass, have you considered adding tilapia? I'm not sure whether they are legal in Mississippi, but folks on this forum seem to have great success with them in small, fertile southern ponds. Several experiments have established that they can produce largemouth bass forage much more quickly than even bluegill.

If my inexperienced self was in your boots, I would:

-Start removing LMB under 13" now. Fishing using live shiners under a bobber might be your best bet, so that you'll get some of the warier LMB.

-Stock 5"+ CNBG.

-Stock 15 pounds of tilapia in May. These should help feed your LMB, keep pressure off of the CNBG, and control those weeds.

Not legal without a permit.

How bad is the permit application process in Miss?

Thats some expensive bass food. Going to cause a one or two day feeding frenzy, and then those bluegill will be a memory. Bass will rip through any cover to eat them. Let me see, starving bass, baby bluegill, how does that equation end everytime?

Those meadow muffins probably help out fertility to a degree. If there was any kind of nutrient overload you would have no fish in it now. I think you are OK there.

I think it has been stated earlier, you have to do a major cull, or selective harvest. Take all of the foot or less bass out. All of them. Then stock adult bluegill, biggest you can get, hopefully when water temp is climbing in the Spring. You should not need a lot, just big spawners.

I'd hold off on the catfish until you get some type of bg/lmb balance. Pretty complex equation throwing cats in there at the same time.

I'd also throw in some additional forage and forage cover. Crawdads, adult bullfrogs and maybe some stumps or artificial forage cover.