Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Fishin' 2012

Nice fish James ! You need a pocket scale with a tape.

Thanks George! I usually am so worried about the fish dying I often measure them without taking a picture but the one on the dock was already dead. I weighed it but it wasnt huge so I forgot what it weighed. I think around eight pounds. The other one my dad was holding he really wanted a picture. The one he is holding is 25 inches and we caught another one he has the picture of that was 27 inches. The 27 incher is the largest we have caught so far. The fish seem to have an increased mortality with the larger fish swallowing the hook. Thats what happened to the one on the dock. We have been using gizzard shad from the pond for bait which also increses the mortality. I think these fish are from the original stocking but I could be wrong.

Eric how big are your hybrids getting?

We caught a bunch of stripers over the weekend! They are packing on the lbs...

James, my IBN calculator say a 27 inch HSB weighs 11.07 lbs!!!
WOW and CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Any one else dares a guess?

WOW, n8ly!

Is that Drake?

yep, thats drake. he is a fishing fool. he knows how to say fishy and fishing!!

I would say in the neighborhood of ten lbs or so.

It looks 10 lbs to me.

We caught some good fish of many species on Monday evening at the proving grounds.










Got some crazy stuff going on in this 30 acre lake. Nothing natural about it. It was the most sterile lake on the planet back in 2003 when we purchased it. Took me a few years and plenty of experiments gone wrong, but we are turning the corner and transforming it into one of the finest multi-species fisheries on the planet.

whoa....those are some very nice fish. Good job!

very nice fish....Thats a true "honey hole"

If you had to take a guess at it how old would you say those hsb are?

Dream fishery right there for anyone who enjoys fishing diversity. Just incredible.

If I had to take a wild guess at the age of those stripers I would have to say 6 years, 11 months, 12 days.... Plus or minus about 2 weeks give or take. Their first 11 months were spent growing out in a hatchery. Then their first summer at my lake I grew them out in a big net before releasing them that fall.

Excellent fish. Congratulations on creating such a great fishery.

Nice fish Nate!

What steps did you take to "un-sterilize" it?

What are the stats on that fish? Crazy big looking in the pic...

CJ, it was a crazy big female bluegill that took a #3 mepps spinner, but it wasnt as big as the pic makes it look. My guess is between 30-34 oz. We have a bunch of bluegill in the 26-30 oz range, but this one was just a cut above the rest.

Dave,

When we bought this lake in 2003 it had a bunch of green sunfish, a small number of skinny 2 lb largemouth bass, and every third or fourth fishing trip you could catch a big 8-9" bluegill. Very little aquatic vegetation, no cover, zero runoff as the lakes sits on top of a huge hill, and visibility down about 20'.

At first we started dumping in things like lime, fertilizer, windmill aerators, all kinds of fish, all kinds of aquatic vegetation, trees, catfish food, etc. (thats when I got started helping other people with their ponds and lakes cause I knew where to buy all that crap) Absolutely anything and everything that had to do with pond and lake management we were dumping in and trying. After a couple years of growing some monster catfish and some marginal success with some big smallmouth bass, along with lots of scams with the likes of the georgia giant people, arkansas free fish guy, "hybrid" crappie, broken windmills, feeders that didn't work, etc etc, I stumbled upon the Pond Boss website, spent a couple years stalking Bob Lusk and the rest is history.

Here is the kicker to this lake, swimming is actually the main activity of the lake so everything I do with fish these days has to maintain at least 10' of clean clear water or momma aint happy. Also growing trophy fish is not the focus either. Large numbers of multiple species is the focus. Most people that fish are very inexperienced anglers catching a fish for their first time, or catching a new species they would never encounter in their lifetime elsewhere.

Most of the good fish in the lake are stocked fish. It is still very hard to grow a fish from start to finish in here. We have lots of natural reproduction of many species, but those fish just dont have what it takes to grow into good adults in this environment (blessing and a cursing) To overcome that we have our own hatchery, cages, etc to grow em up to size and stock them large enough to get over the hump and turn into adult fish.

This info is just a drop in the bucket to what goes on in this lake, but its the proving grounds for observing and manipulating fish populations.

Can you say extensive management !!!

Being able to age and ID the origin and life history of every single fish in a 30 acre lake is a little over the top right? You wanna know what is even crazier is that its all in my stinkin head (yes I know I am not normal).. Every fish since 2003.. We are talking thousands and thousands and thousands of fish from over 12 different hatcheries in the US. Every species and subspecies that I can get my hands on has been experimented with.

Nate,
That is truely impressive! Have a fish distributor that I work with here in MN (John C.), and he has commented to me on the projects you work on and there "cool factor". And I thought I was OCD on pond management.

Nate, that's simply crazy - you are crossing boundaries and achieving remarkable things. Trophy WE, HSB, SMB, BCP, BG...are you kidding me? Nutso, hat's off to you. Absolutely love it.