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Ive been fishing my friends private lake for about a year now.
The lake is about 10 acres .

Heres the situation.

I have fished the Lake about 80 times. In my 80 trips, I have caught 99.9% LMB , and 1 (yes 1) bluegill)
Last year I didnt think much of it when i caught alot of 6-8 inch LMB and only a couple that reached 10 inches .

This year While fishing, the LMB are all still 6-8 inches , though they dont look "stunted" (not really sure what a astunted bass looks like) ?

I see large schools of LMB in the 3-6 inch range , im assuming they are the young of the year, But these schools are ALL OVER THE LAKE . I mean every 10-15 yards there is one of these large schools of fish.
I NEVER see any bluegill, or bluegill fry , And im positive there is no Bullhead in this lake.

Im worried that My friends private lake has no predator/prey balance at all.

is there a better way to understand the relationship than just what I catch and see?

What if anything can I do to help my friends lake out ?

Would stocking only a few Adult Size Bluegill be a good choice?
Or perhaps bluegill fry?

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Is there plenty of weeds/cover in the lake? If not, that's probably why the LMB took over. The BG need somewhere to hide, and some LMB need to be taken out occasionally, or this will be the result. Sounds like you need to keep every LMB you catch. It's a thankless job, but someone has to do it. \:D

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The lake has alot of vegetation , On the north side (sunny side) it has good underwater growth, nearing the surface now. On the East side of the lake its sandy/rocky bottoms with overhanding pine trees , and the west side is sheer cliffs. South side of the lake has lilly pads. It appears to have a good variety of structure and areas for fish.

Any ideas on how to harvest the fish? I feel terrible keeping such a small fish, since it would be hard to get any food from it. But Im willing to keep as many as need be if it will help the bass in the lake get bigger.

How exactly should i harvest?
Should I keep the super dinks and release the 10 inchers?

What should I do with the fish after I keep them? Not sure how to get a fillet off a 8 inch bass.....

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Reading the forums has just confused me more Btw, Seems there is to many different strats to this problem.

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Im going to go out tonight and take some weights and measurements of the fish I catch, i may even take some pictures to put here.

Hopefully that will help in deciding what is best for this lake.

Also, should I spend a day targeting BG to see what if any the population is? Like i said before, I have only caught 1 in 2 years of fishing. But have never targeted them .

If the lake is mainly a LM lake, will harvesting them actually help?

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Take some good side view pics of the LMB and post them here. If you check in the archives, on the 2nd page there is a Relative Weight chart for LMB which will tell you what they should weigh for a certain length of fish. We pondmeisters try and keep the fish's weight above what the chart says.

With a lot of LMB that small, targeting BG might not work as well because the LMB will be eating the bait as well, but it wouldn't hurt to try!


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Not an expert by any means, but I'll talk with ya. You say there are plenty of schools that you see throughout the lake. Anyway you can drop a net and catch a nice number that way? As far as what to do with the bass you catch, I think I'd ask around and see if anyone has a pond that needs some bass in the size range you described. Or possibly you could contact a local fish farm (maybe?) and see if they would like them. Or at least they may be able to help you decide what to do with them. As far as targeting BG to get a more accurate assessment of their population, I think it's a great idea. And pictures of the fish you catch, both species, will be good for the experts in this forum to take a look at.

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The lake is almost certainly bass-heavy. Targeting bluegill is a very good idea if you like bluegill, because odds are decent, if the lake has some fertility to it, that there are some huge bluegill in there. Lakes overpopulated with bass almost always produce larger bluegill than average, and are usually the lakes that produce trophy bluegill, because the bluegill never become overpopulated and the ones that live have all the food they could ever eat and grow several times the size they would in less ideal conditions.

On the other hand, if bass are the species of main interest, they're definitely overcrowded now, and they aren't going to grow well, if at all, until a bunch of them are taken out. By a bunch I mean at least 500, perhaps 1000 or more. The net option could work well, as could the fish farm option.

One other strategy you might consider is stocking tiger muskie or pike. Here's a link to a muskie club that looks to have done some work in your state, and might even stock the lake at no charge to you:

http://www.nwtigermuskies.com/muskiediet.html

The big advantage to this approach would be that the muskie or pike would cull the smaller bass year-in and year-out, so that you didn't have to worry about catching hundreds each year yourself (and what to do with them, etc.) The bass would grow drastically faster than they are now, and the esocids would eat the smaller bass rather than the larger ones, thinning the fish you want thinned. Dwight on this forum has a ten-acre lake in MN that has had pike in it as long as he has owned it, and he's caught LMB over eight pounds and bluegill over 10" from it. I once stocked twenty 12" northerns into a 2-acre pond that was horrendously overpopulated with tiny GSF and almost nothing else, at the same time I stocked 40 one-pound LMB from neighboring ponds; the LMB never overpopulated, the GSF were thinned to the point that the bluegill already present in the lake rebounded and began growing very large, and crappie I had not known were even in the pond (and which I would never stock in a pond) appeared after a couple years at very nice sizes. Within five years of stocking the pike it was one of the best bass lakes I've ever fished.

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How old is the lake (fish stocked when) ? If there are no forage fish you will have to add them and at the same time reduce the predator numbers. An electroshock survey would help to both get the assessment info and remove LMB if overcrowded. Do you see any BG beds around? A seine survey would also help and catch data as noted above.
















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Ok update.

I fished tonight for 2 hours, and i fished strictly with night crawlers on the bottom. I caught 5 Brown Bullhead Catfish pretty big ones. and i also caught 3 BG , also considered big for the area, they were in the 4-6 inch range, thats a pretty big BG in Washington. And also caught one 8 inch bass.

So I guess this lake isnt in as bad of shape as i previously thought. But i think it still needs some attention.



Walt ,

I dont really know how to target Trophy BG, it could be fun, But as you thought , the main species of interest is LM. My first thought was actually to stock Tiger Muskie , but thought that might be a last resort, since we want to mainly catch LM .

ewest,

As far as i know , this lake has been around for along time. i hate to venture, but longer than all of us, its a natural lake , my friends bought the property a years ago, but never used the lake for anything but canoeing . When i met them 2 years ago i started fishing the lake. They have never done any kind of stocking to the lake. Also its not creek fed . Today I also walked around as much of the lake as I possibly could , And i actually did see about 11 BG beds . about a foot in diameter , most of them had a BG guarding , but not all... I didnt know BG spawned this late in the season or I would have looked for BG beds sooner.

With this updated information what are the suggestions on how to move forward.

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What does the small BG population and Perhaps large Bullhead population throw into the equation?

Im not sure what effect bullhead have on a lake.

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Large bullheads indicate a high LMB population. Few YOY bullheads survive to maturity, the few that do have little competition and grow large. In your current situation, bullheads don't have much of an affect. They do compete some with BG and LMB but not much when kept in check under heavy LMB predation. The lake definitely sounds as though it is in the category of being in the WAY too bass heavy. The small BG population is due to heavy bass predation. There may very well be some very nice BG in the lake. A lake that size is very difficult for one man and a fishing rod to manage though...

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Max, if you wanted to target trophy bluegill, use six-pound-test or lighter, a #8 or #10 hook, and either live crickets or live red wrigglers for bait; if you use worms, hook them only once through the nose. Fish with as little weight as possible, and experiment with fishing both on the bottom, and a foot or two off bottom by way of the smallest balsa float you can find. If the lake has a good-sized flat close to deeper water anywhere on it, especially if there is some weedgrowth on the flat, that would be a good place to look. There's a lot more to it than this, but this should get you started.

If you were already thinking of stocking tiger muskie, I would encourage you to do so. There's a hatchery in MN, Minnesota Muskie Farm, that ships anywhere in the U.S., and I believe they also deliver anywhere but I could have that last part wrong. They sell 10-12" tiger muskie. You would only need 2-4 per acre, and they would thin out those small bass in a hurry. And the bass that didn't get eaten would start getting significantly larger.

If LMB are the main focus, you probably should stock more forage for them, either more bluegill or perhaps threadfin shad (I don't know how they would do in WA, or even if you could get them up there). But if you have some interest in bluegill skip the shad as they'll kill the bluegill size.

One more thing you can do to improve the lake: start a fertilization program. It sounds like the lake is not overly fertile; fertilizing will boost the food chain and jump-start the growth of the bluegill and bass both.

Good luck! Take pictures and keep us posted on your progress!

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Walt:

Do you have a website for them? I tried looking, but came up empty.


www.hoosierpondpros.com


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They seem to be having problems with their website at the moment. I tried looking them up a week or so ago and kept getting some Lake Superior Explorer business, which is not them. They had a nice functioning website a month ago, so I don't know what's going on with them. I did manage to find a phone number for them just by googling:

(320) 762-8247

You might mention to them that their website isn't working - it's a good bet it's costing them business.


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