Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations the pond manager's "crystal ball"

You know after reading all of this it kind of donned on me, yes I am slow, that most of the techniques have been considered no-nos if not downright heresy on this forum and according to articles written by the house experts. And many of the so called tips for growing big bass in samll ponds have been largely ignored. Interesting.

A really wise fisheries expert has always maintained successful Pond Management is 10% science and 90% experimentation...."it all depends" - and a huge advocate of "thinking outside the box". Here's a prime example of an approach that works supremely well for THIS pond...take another 2-3 acre pond and it may not hold true.

you know. these last 2 posts here are right on the money. when i started to work on this pond, i dove headlong into it and just did what made sense to me at the time. while i was doing it, i studied up on some things and found out how it was "supposed to be done". a big part of the deal with me is that i can be very stubborn and bull-headed. if something does not make sense or seem necessary to me, i just might not do it. or i might do something else that does make sense to me instead. sometimes i'm glad i bucked convention, sometimes i'm not. that's just my nature.

the other part was money. i just did not have a lot of money to pour into a pond that was not my own. and even if it had been, i still wouldn't have had the money. so i had to do things the cheapest way i could. using wild fish and wild forage, not fertilizing, and so on was not so much of a choice as a necessity.

and that's what i think the coolest part of the story has been for me. i was totally ignorant about pond management when i started. sometimes i couldn't get out of my own way. i didn't do things the "right way". i never knew when to leave well enough alone. and i was still able to achieve a degree of success beyond anything i imagined. i guess it could maybe even be said that i succeeded despite my tactics rather than because of them. i hope that if nothing else my story has encouraged someone who is new to pond management or a bit reluctant to just go for it and give it a try. you just never know. even when you ignore convention and blaze your own trail, it might end up o.k. or better than o.k. and trust me y'all, i am still learning to this day. i still have goals. i would like to grow another few double digit bass before i leave this world. i wanna figure out how to have multiple 6 - 9 pound fish in the pond at the same time rather than just the few i have now. but i will still have to stay on the cheapskate's path because while my fish have grown a lot, unfortunately my bank account has not.

that said, please understand this if you don't get anything else out of anything i've said. if you have the time and money, consult the experts. i'm definitely NOT one of them.

That's why this stuff is meat. Totally different than 'traditional' methods.
I must say, I've done this for 30+ years, have done all the traditional stuff, now I've been able to work on ponds and fish from coast to coast...with missions as varying as the ponds and owners themselves.
That's why this stuff is rock solid. Tradition is what it is...tried and true. But that doesn't mean it works. Think about it this way.
...If tried and true traditional management works so well, why do people go outside the box?... Because traditional doesn't always work.
I happen to think jignpig is on to something. I've done exactly what he is writing about, but not at attentively as he has. I'm telling you, think more deeply about his methods and don't even think about the fish.
If you guys can hear his words and read beyond the fish, you will become much better pond managers, even you guys who think you already know what you are doing.
Every one of us is limited by what we know. Everyone. That makes it imperative that we learn more and more. If we don't, we are doing everyone here a disservice, not to mention our own minds.
I challenge each one of you who are intrigued by this thread to look beyond the results. Think about the thought process which developed the method. Then, think about the method. If you will do that, you will soon push aside your own boxes.

Thanks guys for the answers. So if I'm reading this correctly, I should only transfer the females from my small pond to the big one(if I was going to do that sort of thing). I'm not too concerned with disease due to the smaller pond being mainly run off from the larger one. I should probably wait a year though because I'm planning on stocking some LMB fingerlings come June or as soon as Bob gets them in.
P.S. Didn't mean to highjack this thread, maybe a mod could move it to it's correct spot.
Thanks again!

If I was to label jignpig's methodology it would be "Pond Micromanagement for Lunker Female Largemouth Bass on a Limited Budget." He maximized his time, efforts and funds to achieve his goals through experimentation. A lot of it outside the normal thought process. Again, his results speak for themselves. But would it work in every pond? Of course not. Each pond has it's own personality, it's own ecosystem.

Although my goals are much different from jig and pig, I had similar experience. Only difference is 99% of my customers are barely if not at all interested in lunkers. They want a kid friendly fishing environment with lots of action. Lunkers just suck up too many resources to provide that. But working with HOA's, in fact almost anyone now in this economy, you have budget constraints.

One of the wildest what are you doing plans or experiments I ever tried was introducing a native disaster, creeping water primrose. You think people grown when they hear gsf, they just go not that stuff, when they hear that. Why? It's everywhere. It's invasive, it spreads like wildfire. However, it does fit my number one rule, if I don't like it, or it doesn't work I can get it out. And it happened by accident. I had another customer who wanted it removed from one shore. No chemicals, all manual. You can't really cut it, it spreads by cuttings. So I am manually pulling it by the root. And as I am doing this huge amounts of forage is falling out. I had never seen anything like it. And this was stuff that had not swam away when I started pulling it. When I looked into it, everything was there. Small fish, fry, baby crawdads, tadpoles and just loaded with smaller organisms.

So I manage another we can't spend much pond that has a dead shoreline on an embankment. You can look fifteen feet out and see nothing but clear water. No fish, no plants, no frogs, nothing. I had fished along this shore and had not even got a hit. So why not take this discard material and give it a try, I can get it out if it does not work or goes to another part of the pond.

It took about three years to get it established, on a pond that has an annual 8-9 foot drawdown. Nothing else will work there. I put it in one little area on the dead embankment. I called it the Frog zone. Pretty soon I have it pretty think there. Frogs, baby lmb, bg and gambusia are thick in it. Dragonflies hover over it constantly. And the biggest surprise of all, it had unknown benefits. Erosion control for the embankment. Weedblock. And that shoreline went from no fish to the best fishing on the entire pond. LMB just lived off of it waiting for easy meals to swim out. Even better, the entire ponds LMB average weight per fish went up. I created an entire forage area from nothing, for almost nothing.

After a few years I let it spread along that shoreline. Now that entire embankment is a giant forage ecosystem. Even a growout area for fry. If I get an occaisonal pop up somwhere else, I cull it. With ease. After 5 years it is done. Autopilot I just maintain or control it. This pond which was largely unfishable and so out of balance from other issues is now a gem.

Would it work in every pond? Of course not. Is it a potentially invasive species scorned by many? Yes. Is is an alien species? No, It's local, everywhere. Just like tulies, cattails and algae. I removed it entirely from one shoreline. It was gone for years. But the pond I put it in it just filled a large hole. A gap on the pond and in the pond's ecosystem. It even enhanced my plankton bloom. And cut down on algae.

Sometimes you just have to go for it. Giuve it a shot. But you also have to think, on a risk assessment level, what is the worst that could happen? Can I get this stuff out? Can I back out if it goes wrong? Since my fish population is fairly stacked I now experiment with natural forage cover and aquatic vegetation for the pond's fish feeding and fishing. I am pretty far outside the box here because I don't even think a box exists. The big focus is on planting, selective harvest, feeding, forage cover, forage and fertilization. Aquatic vegetation is close to an afterthought. It's there. But let me tell you, it's impact is huge. In my experience is can make a pond beautiful, the best fishing you can ask for, or crash it with a complete kill off. To me, I like to think of the pond as one complex ecosystem. I try to see the entire picture, and not miss the forest through the trees.

just an FYI I started check my fish we catch in the pond for marking are something to help I.D. fish from other fish. Bass do have very little diffrent marking but they do if you take real time and look at them. My bluegill have some real noted marking. Now I need to read and find a link that we'll help me note the diffrent on Male and female bass.
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