Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations spawning habitat

My 5 acre lake has a good pop. of c.cat bass b-gill and a few res. I haven't seen any baby cats swimming around. the b-gill and bass spawn is excellent. I put some pipe in for the cats, and was wondering if boxes would help too. Just like the hoggers use. Also, have only seen 3 res on spawning beds, but they were huge. I have seen snails in the lake, but they are not a problem yet. The lake is about 46 yrs. old and was never properly managed. Sure would like to put in some adult res this spring. How many would I put in? Off hand I was thinking 300. Is this too high?

300 would be plenty. You will need lots of shellfish for them to thrive (ie, snails, crawfish, mussels). As for the catfish spawning if you have a lot more bass than catfish it will be difficult for small catfish to survive. Bass love baby catfish. We had a pond years ago that had a lot of bass. We stocked channel cat. The fish we stocked grew wery well. However, they were never able to reproduce. Recently we added bass to a pond that had been stocked with catfish years ago and the catfish have spawned very well.

Thats exactly why I want a good catfish spawn ,to feed my bass! As far as the snail, mussel, crawdad pop. it's outstanding. My main goal is huge healthy bass. so I'm pretty sure the 300 res will keep the snails in check.

Brad,
I guess you already know how to make & place the catfish spawning boxes but if you look in Questions & Observations on Dec. 4th Jbrockey posted info on this subject. You can also search to find more info.