Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations year 2 plan, what do you think?

Love this forum! It's been a great help getting started!
Dug,lined, and filled my southern Oklahoma 1 acre pond in summer 2017. Started with fatheads and CNBG that October. By spring 2018 was seeing reproduction/fry. Summer 2018 stocked about 80 fingerling LMB. Now (summer 2019) regularly catching 6 inch CNBG and 12- 13 inch 1 lb LMB (super happy with this!). My goal is to have a healthy, balanced pond with an occasional 4-5 lb (or larger) LMB. So this year, just catch and keep records. Starting next year, maybe begin harvesting some of the 8-12" LMB. Not sure what kind of parameters to set for harvesting bluegill other than at some point begin taking out the 4-5 inch CNBG. Thoughts? Advice? Suggestions? thanks!

I'm no culling expert, but my first thought is to get a good confidence level on how big your original stocked LMB will be going into next year and, next year, start culling out any offspring LMB that get too big for the original stockers to eat. My reasoning would be that the original LMB should be creating plenty of forage and the LMB offspring that get too big to be forage will be competing for food with the other LMB and CNBG (and possibly producing more offspring adding to the biomass of the pond). This idea would, ideally, have to be backed up with Relative Weight studies of the LMB.

I think I would apply the same logic for the CNBG also. I have been moderately practicing this concept with my HSB and HBG pond and it seems real easy on paper, but once you get a fish in your hand, it gets more difficult to make the decision to cull or not to cull.

All in all, Relative Weight studies should be the deciding factor IMO.