Pond Boss Forums INTRO New Forum Member Introduction Hello from S. Ga

New to the forum and looking for info. I live in south geogia and we recently moved to a subdivision with a 66acre lake. The lake has LMB,BG,Cats and darn crappie. The first year I moved here I caught a few BIG LMB-Biggest was 12lbs. Older residence say large bass used to be the norm years ago, but has declined. Trying to find out the history of what type fish were present and introduced over the years has been hard. I do know the dam broke about 12 years ago and was a restocked-with what I'm not sure. One resident told me at the time the dam broke the University of Georgia sent a large airated truck to try and save the huge bass for study-airaitor broke and fish were lost. Here is my ? Recently we had another breach of the dam and lost 1/2 the lake-

as you can see it happened during spawning time!The Dam was fixed before all was lost and the water level is know about 1.5ft below full pool. I have recently been elected to the lake commity after this disaster.
Most of the residence believe the way to bring back the big bass is to keep all small bass, but i worry about those darn crappie-will they take over?(No-I don't like Crappie) I suspect the days of the common monster bass were the days before crappie. The lake is relatively shallow-deepest is 10ft with sparce cover-Hycinth is controlled by yearly spraying of all vegitation. My idea is to add structure to better concentrate the darn crappie for harvest and spray only hycinth and maybe add some forage fish. I have been warned to step lighly because some of the older residence don't give a darn about fishing-just pretty scenery. Sorry for the long post-i have alot on my plate. Oh yeah-I will have no funds as we aqiured 30,000 dept to the homeowners for the Dam repair.
Here is a pic of my best bass from 2011, atleast I know there is 1 giant left unless she went through the Dam breach.

wow....nice fish.

Welcome to the forum! Alot of variables to deal with on your lake. Recent loss of water may have been a blessing in terms of reducing bass recruitment this year. Aside from the few large bass, are you catching primarily <14" bass? Water quality, primarily pH, alkalinity, hardness? Structure, more forage, spice up the genetics with light stocking of adult F1s and/or FL bass. All can get expensive. First step would be an electrofishing survey once your water's back up to see exactly where you are now then chart a course toward your goal. HOAs can be tricky...

I have caught alot of different size bass in the lake-alot of <14" but they are not all the same size for sure. Just not alot of numbers. I don't crappie fish, so can't really tell about there numbers. I doubt there will be any funds for an electrofishing survey, stocking, ect...Our dues went from 125 a year to 255 after the dam repair and alot of residence are not happy about paying that. I plan to start by adding homemade structure of somesort myself-just need to figure out were to put it. It's hard to implament a culling system because who knows what people catch and what people release.

Do a survey of those that fish it. Find out what they want and what their goals for "their" lake are. Most will say to catch a fish on every cast.

Great idea Dave! If the HOA has a monthly newsletter, maybe a survey could be included with it?