Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking Skinny LMB in old pond

I would say this - how much help have those pike been at solving the skinny LMB situation.

GSF were a joke by Yolk.

I think this proves without any doubt the critical importance of knowing the facts (what is there) before a plan is hatched or implemented.

Sorry Skinny!!

No tension on the GSF. I wouldn't get within a mile of any esox species, however.


Truer words were never spoken. It's hard to plonk down the several hundred bucks it takes to have a good shock survey done, but the info can be critical, as the above case illustrates.

Besides, it'd be a huge waste [and quite embarressing] if your 8" tigers were EATEN by other predators!

mmmm.......how much help have they been.

all year round, including last winter and this thanksgiving, there are generally skinny bass.

All of a sudden we have thicker bass (some still really skinny...took those out) with the appearance of 2 y.o. pike.

I've been fishing this pond @ least twice a year for 5 years, and never seen a pike, or bass as healthy as the ones i just caught.
Plus....the bass should be hungrier, in the winter, since they chase food less often...but here it is, plenty of thick bass, and plenty of small bluegill to feed them.

I'd say for now, the pike are helping. But what i am afraid of is @ 2y.o., a 15" pike has no predators in that lake with the exception of the elusive "5lb" bass that supposedly exists, and the walleye.....or the mythical lake beast Onezey.

That is unlikely. So that 15" pike will be a 20" pike next year, and all of a sudden competition for those BG's exists. Then the year after that he's a little bigger and so on and so forth, until eventually he is taking down bass on his own.

So as the bass population (and sadly, the crappie and bluegill population) keep dropping, and the pike population keeps rising, won't we just have the same problem again, just with skinny, stunted pike instead?

Not only then will i have to change my username, but the fishing for the kids is pretty ruined (kids don't like things with teeth, last i checked...)

I however, am thrilled, since i love catching pike. Unfortunately i don't live there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_shiner
honestly, I think this is what we were using as bait, we call them roaches, though.

Both the bass and pike gobble these up. What would happen if we stocked these "golden shiners" (the acronym escapes me, I thought GS was gizzard shad....) after the construction of some more artificial cover?

Thanks
SB (is that one taken?)

GSH = Golden Shiner

Roaches are a European Shiner that looks quite similar to GSH, but IIRC gets a little larger.

Dr. Willis has reported that there are some self supporting roach populations (up his way) established via bait bucket releases.

No way to know the age of those pike without scale , spine or otolith info . They could be 6-7 just as easy. I have seen LMB at 10 inches that were 5 years old and 8 mths old and BG 4 inches at 3 years and at 6 mths.

More likely that both the LMB and pike are stunted.

ok, at this point this thread should probably exist in evaluating existing populations, not corrective stocking, but just as well....

So the 3 options on why there are now pike in the lake, assuming that the most likely (they always were, and are just as stunted as the bass), is the answer still improve cover and remove bass?

or given that the bass looked in better shape now, should it just be let go to see what happens? (aside from making cover)

ok....I think i am going to do the forum managers a favor and just start a new thread over in evaluating and managing existing populations. Thanks to everyone who has been so helpful in the past few days, I really appreciate your time and advice.

Thanks
skinny

Skinny,

This is just my rookie opinion but sounds to me like you have way to many types of predetor fish in your pond! Bass, Pike, Walleye, Crappie dangit man I wish I had a bait store next to this pond!!! Just kidding. But if your going to keep all them type of fish in there your always going to be adjusting in some sort of way!

Yeah....I know....The sad part is that people never take any out. It's "icky" to most of them. As far as i understand it my semi-retired dad is the only one okay with that, the rest are soccer moms and such. He's been talking about a fish fry since he moved there 5 years ago, and they all look at him funny when he does. yuppies, I guess...nobody spent enough time in the boyscouts.

The walleye Have only been seen on 2 occasions that i know of. Someone spotted one near a dock, and we got one ice fishing, a big monster too.

The pike....well, they were unheard of until a few years ago, when someone dumped Onezey in the lake, now this year they popped up. As people on this forum have pointed out, there could be lots of reasons for this. Personally i think that either a) nobody knew they were there because the bass bit so heavily that they were just missed by angling or b) onezey ate a bunch of bass, plus some of the bass might have died off by other means...and the pike finally are making it past minnow-sized with the pressure off a lil so we are now seeing them hit lures (or in the ice-fishing cases, roaches).

The BG...man they are fat. There was a pond by a hotel in Indiana i went to once that had freakishly large BG, but other than that, and the ones i see on bruce's site, i've never seen BG to compare.

The crappie, although there aren't many that you catch from dad's pier or from the paddleboat, they are fatties as well.

In fact, it is the big, top predators that nobody sees big ones..the pike, the bass etc. Just lil guys, like i said in another thread, skeletor fish.

I'd love to hook into a massive pike in that lake. So far i have the record for biggest fish in weight, a grass carp, but the neighbor chuck (south of dad's house) is the only one who hooked onezey after it got dumped in. And even the fuzzy kodak disposable pic they have of that...man...i would love to wrestle that thing in.