Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Can I have trophy size bass in a 3/4 acre pond?

I have new 13’ deep 3/4 acre pond and stocked 500 bluegill and redear at 80/20, 100 channel cat, and 1000 fathead minnows last March. I’ve read on here to stock the bass next year so I will. I’ve feed the fish until now and there are small ones everywhere
I read in “Basic Pond Management” that in ponds less then one acre just add a 1000 channel cats and fathead minnows, but have no interest in doing that so I started looking for other options.
I like the idea of having trophy size largemouth so would pellet trained ones work, or would the hybrid striper be best for a trophy size bass? I will be feeding them with what ever it takes of floating pellets and starting to aerate with a bottom diffuser next year.
Also what would be a good stocking number?

Firstly - What do you consider a trophy sized bass (length&weight) for your area of Indiana? Cecil Baird "The Award Winning Fish Taxidermist" and a forum member from Indiana could also help us with this information Maybe you should go to an IN state website and see what size bass they consider worthy of recognition. . The further north one goes the smaller trophy bass become. This is why national magazines like InFisherman separate the country into regions and their respective award winning fish sizes.

There has been a fair amount of discussion of raising LMbass in smaller ponds on this forum. See what posts you can collect with some searching of the Forum Headings. As I recall this has all ben discussed before under one topic or another. The main problem is some of thes topics are buried under other unrelated titles. I will also search when I get a little free time. Then when armed with a little more basic "small pond-big bass" knowledge return with some details of your unanswered questions and a couple of us northern pond owners can supply some supplimental information about larger bass in small ponds.

Secondly If you are truly interested in a quality LMbas fishery in a small pond, I would begin a crusade to remove as many of those catfish as possible. In my opinion you stocked way too many catfish in a small pond if you are primarily interested in LMbass. Catfish, as they grow larger, compete with bass for food. Each Catfish can "take-up" the food reserves of one bass. If you want to have catfish you need to realize the total bass fishery will have to share food items with the predatory cats that are present.

Also I think fair numbers of catfish will cloud up the water and make it MORE difficult for LMbass to readily and efficiently catch fish, since bass are sight feeders and certain water clarities are optimum for bass feeding. With water that is too cloudy, your bass will not grow properly and you will never realize those trophy fish. However with cloudy water you can still grow trophy catfish.

I am not nearly as qualified as many others on this forum to address questions about largemouth bass but I can talk quite a bit about Striped Bass Hybrids. If you check with your local weather service or on the internet you can find out what the daily mean temperature in your neck 'o the woods. If it is below 80 degrees F. during late July you could raise trophy size SBH. There's one big problem that you need to think about. Big largemouth can be grown in a small ponds without large amounts of supplemental feeding. This, however, is not true of SBH. You're gonna need to feed and feed and feed and feed. You could end up with lots of nice fish, but you could end up with significant water quality issues. It would also be important to establish how much "flow through" you have in your pond. If the water is replaced quickly and frequently by either runoff or well water then maybe th SBH could be utilized. Have you considered largemouth management with maybe 10 or 15 SBH? Lots of options but lots of potential fun and enjoyment in your life!

I will start fishing the cats out, but plan on keeping 10 or so. I also did look for some other post and I did find some info, but I couldn't find one that directly answered this question. What I consider a trophy would be a 5lb+ bass. I wouldn't have to have lots of fish this size, but still would like to catch and release them from time to time. My pond doesn't have much "flow through" just in the spring, but it is spring feed. What I want is a nice bluegill pond with some catfish, and a possibility to catch a 5lb+ bass.
I do have another question. To sustain a trophy bass pond it has been said you need an acre of surface water, but they also say that if you aerate you'll be able sustain more fish. So is a 13' deep 3/4 acre pond that is aerated able to sustain as many fish as an acre pond that isn't?
Thanks

Stay Tuned, I am working on a lengthy answer for this. I will try to get Cecil Bairds's input -opinion.

What is a trophy size largemouth in central Indiana? I would say minimum of 4 lbs. but I do mount bass for people that are tickled to death by 3 + pound fish. Biggest bass I've taken in up here in northeastern Indiana was this spring at 8 lbs. 12 oz. out of a private pond.

In my business I see lots of 4 lb. bass, a fair amount of 5 pounders, and only occasionally see 6 lb. plus fish. Anything 7 pounds or more is quite rare. However, I have see a decline in the size of the bass I receive over the years and have been doing taxidermy for almost 20 years. I have several guesses as to why this is but they may be only speculation:

1.) Lots of pressure on bass now, and I have learned in one of my own ponds that once a bass is captured on an artifical once or twice it's very unlikely you will catch him on that bait again. I truly believe with all the catch and release, bass are being conditioned to avoid certain artificals.

2.) The mostly catch and release fad has caused many ponds to be bass heavy and reduce the size of the average bass.

The reason I don't beleive bass are being overfished vs. conditioned, is the catch and release mentality, and a study I have seen on a local lake chain that receives lots of tournament pressure showing little effect on the total number of bass.

One thing I can say emphatically is the very biggest bass I take in come from private waters with few exceptions.

Bill Cody,
Either you got to busy, which I know how that is, or you're working on the most well thought out and informative reply I could ever hope for. Either way I'm very interested in what you have to say.
Thanks

I have collected 13 pages of information that I am trying to condense. I don't want to hog too much space on this forum. My goal is to get it done by Monday eve; it is still too long. From my experience 10 cats are way too many in a 3/4 ac pond if you want it primarily to produce large bass. Keep in mind that cats when large will detract from the numbers of large bass. I have a friend who has about 10 to 12 huge cats 32"-36" in his smaller pond. These cats primarily due to their big size HOG the food from even the bigger bass and keep the pellet feeding bass from growing properly. These big cats literally tend to keep the bass on the periphery of the main feeding area. In his and your cases, these big cats are a nuisance in my opinion.

In a small pond, it is going to be extremely difficult if not impossible to have it both ways if good numbers of bass bigger than 3 - 4 lbs is your goal. You decide.

Bill, just give us all 13 pages - it will be at least 12.5 pages of great info we'll learn from. I'm trying to decide what kind of Channel Cat/LMB mix I want in the pond next year (and therefore how many Cats to remove) for the opposite long term goal - production of large bluegills and redears. Short term goal is reduction of golden shiner numbers to convert their biomass into edible fish. I anxiously await your post.

Let's say that every time one of us got some useful information from a Bill Cody post that we had to give him a quarter.....

Bill would own the bank!!

Raising Trophy LM bass In Ponds Less Than 1 Acre. For additional information see some of Bob Lusk's posts by using the search feature. I may list them if I get extra time.

Here is a summary of my notes on this topic. My comments ASSUME that you have a good grasp of the basic knowledge for raising bass.

What you want to do is DIFFICULT and that is why it is often not recommended. To do this successfully, it takes time, skill, patience, dedication, lots of knowledge, and experience, plus some mistakes!. I’ve “Been there done that” several times. Bob Lusk's book, "Raising Trophy Bass", should also cover this topic more completely. Buy, study and follow the basic concepts in his book.

My comments here pertain to smaller ponds and fish raising techniques can AND will be different in larger ponds and small lakes. Also the methods will be different if you have different goals than raising trophy or big bass.

Large bass can be grown in a northern 0.75 acre pond. It can even be done in a 0.25 acre pond. 1. The main concern, question or variable is how many and what sizes of bass can be raised in each of those ponds? 2. A second concern I have is, once the fish or least the original stock of fish are raised to large size, how CATCHABLE will they be and how often will you be able to re-catch them or practice catch & release in the small pond? 3. To do the first two things, management or population manipulation have to be optimum to keep densities correct and the food base adequate to maintain larger numbers of rapidly growing & healthy trophy fish AND keep forage items adequate in-the-presence-of a constantly changing fish community of births & deaths. That is quite a task especially for the average pondowner without professional help or guidence.

Background - When trying to raise large fish in any water body, one has to be aware of the natural productivity of the system and assess all artificial inputs into the system that are responsible for boosting productivity, growth and carrying capacity. Carrying capacity or fish biomass then has to be manipulated to create a population bias, skew or trend, toward larger fish in the presence of increasing numbers of more bass due to annual reproduction and recriuitment. This then also becomes a fish management issue.

As we have mentioned here numerous times previously, fish biomass or numbers in a pond are directly related to the pond’s fertility. Pond fertility is often measured by how much phytoplankton & zooplankton is in a known volume of water. Typically clear water has less plankton and more fertile water is cloudier; typically greener water and has lots of both kinds of plant and animal plankton. Fertilizer i.e. nutrients make the plankton become more dense or abundant. Waters with higher plankton amounts produce more fish biomass and/or numbers. Feeding fish pelleted food can supplement or compensate for lack of plankton and increase overall fish biomass in a pond.

Some past data - A study was done in the mid 1970’s in 8 central US states by a group of fishery biologists. The group sampled all fish in 38 “average” ponds (0.5 – 4.1 acres).

Total weight of all bass in the unfertilized “natural” ponds ranged from 3 to 100 lb per acre; average was 36 – 41 lbs/ac (2 yr study). Total numbers of bass larger than 8” per acre ranged from 2 to 106. Numbers of bass larger than 16” ranged from 1 to 16 per acre.
Estimates for you:
Based on the above information, your pond, if it is optimum, and has been managed properly and without fertilization or pelleted feeding, it could produce 15 to 17 large bass (16”+) per acre (in your case 11-13 large bass/0.75ac). The larger these bass become, expect fewer large bass to be present.. What you are trying to do is contradict Mother Nature and that is a very difficult task to accomplish.

An example here of average numbers of trophy bass to expect in a smaller pond is a past post by Archerobx ,in PA(7/7/04) -
“I have a old pond almost an acre. I had about five large bass in it about 24 inches. I let a friends family fish it when I went on vacation and when I got back they were gone. That was 2-3 years ago. My problem is that I have not caught or seen any bass that size since. The bluegill pop in that time seems to have exploded. There are a good number of small bass but no biggins. I have shiners,crappie,bluegill,perch and minnows in the pond”. My comment -His 5 big bass (24”) were undoubtedly the largest ones present and is an example of how many 7 lb+ bass one can realistically expect per acre compared to a few more per acre of those bass that are smaller (16” – 21” long).

If the bass are fed high protein (40%-50%) pellets, if the pond is fertilized and/or if high amounts of large sized forage items (trout, shad, adult shiners) are added on a regular basis in addition to regular forage items present for the larger bass, the number of large bass per acre could be increased up to 4 times. Increasing bass biomass more than 4 times the natural level then puts you into aquaculture methods and somewhat different techniques then apply.

Greg Grimes says that pellet raised bass growing on a main diet of pellets seem to “top out’ at around 6 lbs. I think this is probably due to these large fish having to expend too much energy in consuming the small 1/4" fish pellets plus maybe some other dietary issues. To keep thes really large bass growing efficiently, larger sizes of pelleted food may be necessary. Cecil Baird is experimenting with larger sized pellets and pellets with 50% protein with low carbohydrates for growing big LMbass. His research when completed will broaden our knowledge on this topic.

Managing a pond for trophy LMB is difficult and requires patience, dedication and attentiveness; plus money. The pond must be carefully managed and smaller bass harvested to routinely produce numerous trophy LMB per acre. Once a trophy bass is removed conditions (mostly proper forage items) have to be just right for another fish to grow and take that big fishes' place.

What to Stock - A normal stock of fingerling or juvenile bass will contain both males and females. Females grow faster and larger than males. Normal sex ratios of reproducing adults can and typically do create problems with too many young bass entering the population and thus consuming too much forage that could have been eaten be the larger “goal” bass. In the smaller pond, you do not have lots of room for raising large bass so you want to maximize all the space you have.

"Thinking outside the box". The simplest method would be to stock mostly or all female bass and few if any males to maximize the numbers of truly large bass in a smaller area. This way basically all the consumed fish forage is “consumed” by large goal oriented fish. Main problem with this technique is that LMbass are not easily sexed. To try and achieve this you could selectively stock adult female gravid fish, or in a mixed population, concentrate on catching & removing males fish from the nesting sites. If you stock adult fish be sure there is proper numbers/amounts of large sized forage items present to maintain the big basses’ health and growth. Large bass do not grow the best or fastest on fathead minnows or 2”-4” bluegill.

Recent research (1995) found that there is a clear relationship between strike speed and fish size in several species including LMB which are "ram-feeders". The bigger the fish the slower the strike speed. This is why B.Lusk emphasizes in his book that big bass feed differently than bass less than 16". The strike of a 5 lb bass takes 50% longer than a strike of a 1 lb bass. Thus for large bass to feed efficietly and gain weight, they need to catch as big as prey as possible each time (J. Exp Biol. 198: 419-433) .

Two other options come to mind for a pond with a normal sex ratio of bass. Limit spawning by destroying nests or limit spawning areas for the bass. Young bass can also be regularly thinned by angling, which is usually the most common method. Either one or all of these could help reduce recruitment, reduce competition among bass for food and promote growth of largest bass.

Once northern midwest bass reach 16” or 17” and with proper food they should gain at least 12 ounces to ideally 1 lb per year. If this is not happening in your pond then something is probably out of balance and should be fixed for you to maintain your goals.

This fish reproduction and recruitment problem can also be avoided if you chose another “big game” non-reproducing species such as hybrid striped bass (HSB) instead of Lmbass as a trophy fish in the smaller pond. Since HSB are non-reproducing, you have direct control of fish density. They will keep growing as long as food and conditions are adequate. They fight harder than LMbass of same length but I think they are harder to re-catch and become more quickly ‘hook smart” conditioned to fishing pressure than Lmbass. Bruce Condello may have advice on this topic.

Practicing Catch & Release - Frequently catching, releasing, and re-catching a limited number of trophy bass in a small pond becomes a problem. Fish “wise up” and quickly. It is their survival instinct.

When the fish are “hunted” or fished, then animal behavior, conditioning and AVOIDENCE of baits & each fishes’ SURVIVAL SKILLS enter the picture. The more often the fish are exposed to lures & baits and are hooked, the more conditioned or experienced they become at avoiding being caught. By repetitively catching the same few confined fish you are training them to avoid biting things that are unnatural. The smaller the water body and the more often it is fished the worse this problem becomes.

One can “fairly easily” raise large bass or another type of fish in a small pond but intensive fishing pressure on them trains them to avoid biting or recapture. So you are put in a catch 22 situation. You can produce trophy fish, but harassing them frequently with hook & line can produce fish that are more cautious and “hook smart” and are rarely caught.

Fishing for them should be done on a very limited basis IF one expects to be able to readily catch the larger older fish whenever you do decide to fish for them. Using more refined fishing methods can work for a limited time. I have discovered that only occasional fishing (1x or 4x per yr) should be done in the small pond (less than 1 ac). A majority of that fishing should be TAILORED toward the smaller fish for purposes of management, thinning or monitoring of size, body condition, and numbers. Every time a large bass is caught its body wt./condition needs to be assessed and recorded. Good notes and fish records are necessary to achieve your goal.

Casual recreational fishing and/or frequently (weekly or 2x monthly) fishing and or frequently trying to catch the big fish will quickly produce a population of large hook smart fish. When this happens, this will be evidenced over time by your more and more catching mostly smaller bass and more rarely catching the larger bass, but yet still seeing the big ones in feeding sessions. The smaller the pond the less frequently it should be fished to minimize producing “hook smart large fish”.

Initially I created 13 pages of information on this whole topic. I may incorporate much of it and remaining parts into an article with B.Lusk for PB magazine. There is quite a bit of additional examples of good basic bass raising information in old PB Posts; check them out. For brevity I will end here unless you have additional questions. Good luck because you will also need some luck in addition to the other technical stuff to achieve your current goal in a 0.75 acre pond.

I may be back to do some addtions or more editing.

thanks bill for all the hard work,but the truth is this guy has all most no chance.i've dug ponds for the past 15 years and i do not know 1 person who has done this over the long haul.the truth is put some fish in the pond and have a good time catching them are get me are somebody to go dig this pond out to at least a min.of 4-5 acres then raise your trophy bass.it just can't be done.

Bill, Thanks. I wish I was starting over. However, when I started, Pond Boss didn't exist.

You ought to write your own book.

Bill,
Thanks for all the great info. I believe I will look into HSB as my first attempt at geting a large fish. I thank they’re my best choice because I can control their numbers, they take well to pellets, my pond is bowl shaped and 12’ deep, and their lure shyness won't matter because they won't be fished a lot. I’ve also read that they control the small bluegills well so there’s a better chance of growing large bluegills
This pond can't be dug any larger then what it is now because it's on the side of a hill in front of my house and its widest point is at the dam which is built on the bottom of a hill and its keyway sets on a layer of shell.
Thanks

fish/hunt. Before I know what I know now, I did it in a 3/4 acre pond but I did not have more than 30 big (3-6 lbs) bass in 3/4 ac. This pond also included 16 HSB up to 27". Cecil Baird is currently even doing better than that. He has a real production system developed for raising trophy bass in 3/4 acre.

realtreegiz. Your decision to first try HSB is a good one. If ever you do not like the HSB fishery you can later always stock LMB. Since the HSB are not reproducing they will eventually die out. It is feasable but more difficult to do it the other way around; LMbass then HSB.

PS - I do not think HSB are a cold water fish like you indicated in the other topic. I think theyare somewhere inbetween a cool-water and warm-water fish. I am pretty sure that Bruce ment the HSB are most stressed from fishing/angling when at the higher temps rather than meaning they would not survive at temps above 80F. I am raising them in a 7ft deep pond with bottom aeration and I am at the about the same degree north as you.

DaveD. - Working on the book for northern ponds, but it will be awhile yet.

Great info Bill! I want to hear more about this larger feed when it comes available.

Bill have not been here alot lately. Super busy! I'm amaszed at how much time you put into your post. Thanks! Couple of points is that I was suprised at the lbs bass/ac in the research. I have always thought 50 lbs/ac was good with fertiliztation, supplemental feeding etc. I tell my clients if we get 80 lbs bass/ac through mgmt we are doing well.

Also I wanted to tell realtree I disagree that hsb control bluegill. They are not setup to ambush bluegill around cover. They do great when feeding and/or shad, but poorly on just bluegill. Inversly if you want good bluegill fishing they will not help acheive this b/c of lack of control of bluegill population.

The question I've been asking has been if either HSB or LMB would be able to thrive enough to give me a 5lb+ fish in my 3/4 acre, 12 deep pond, feed, and aerated pond. I've had some great answers that say yes but not very many and you must have a management program in place. Now how about putting a small amount of each? What I'm seeing in a few posts is that it's being done. Since neither fish has the exact same needs this would allow me to have a few more fish and two kinds of trophy fish. I realize there's a learning process to doing something like this, but I've already dedicated myself to this by building a pond and I figure I can always use Pond Boss products and forum for help.
So can it be done, what would be the stocking #, what do I need to do the first year starting next spring, and yes we’ll start fishing the cats out?(I figure I have at least a year to catch most of them)
Thanks

I called a fishery that is near me today and I gave them all the info that I posted here and they said to put in 37 HSB and 150 3-4" or 115 5-7" LMB in my 3/4 acre pond. Those numbers sound high to me what do you guys think???

Smile nicely, get a firm grip on your checkbook and back carefully toward the door. Whatever you do, don't turn your back to them. They are looking at you with carnal knowledge on their mind.

The norm that I have always heard is 100 lbs. of predators per acre. Of course, thats a norm. That also should include large bluegill that eat fry while they are making new ones. You also have a bunch of catfish that you will probably never eliminate. Your question was about BIG bass. Since you can't really stop bass from spawning and really can't clean out all of the small ones, it becomes a balancing act combined with intense management. The combination of HSB and LMB is intriguing since they actually do inhabit different areas. However, you can still have a biomass problem that can bring everything to their knees. Bill and others here have said a mouthful. Clean out all of the cats you can and get some appropriate # of bass and get ready to work hard.

realtree, if you called me for fish with your pond size and goals in mind I would sell you. 25 hsb and 50 (max) fingelring bass or 25 5-7 inch bass. You said trophy bass this means stock less. If you stocked the numbers suggested you will get poor growth.

That's what I thought with the info you guys have given me.
She also asked about my cats. They're are a few that are about 8" now which she said they wouldn't be a problem.
We are going to start fishing them hard next spring.

Greg,
How about 25 HSB and 50 F1's and do you ship to Indiana?

THANKS A LOT!!!

Personally, I'd start with 35 HSB, clip the lower lobe of the caudal fin and harvest five of your slowest growers each of the next three years. This allows for 20% annual hooking/natural mortality and still leave you with a dozen or so really nice big fish after three years. Then in a couple of years you can evaluate your water quality by testing and/or visual clues and add a few HSB annually as needed. Trust me...I've seen numerous ponds of your approximate size that did not suffer water quality issues with that many fish.