Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations overpopulated bass

Hey guys, I recently moved to a 55 acre lake in Northern WI. The lake according to the last DNR electrofishing report it is about 75% LMB. Based on what we catch and see I would agree on these numbers. There are some decent sized BG and a few small YP, just not in great numbers.
Any suggestions on how to get this more balanced? Just keep pulling all of the LMB that I can?

55 acres is too big to make any sort of dent in the fish population by angling, imo. Sure, you can keep removing the small bass, but if this is a public lake, you would need to adhere to the local bag limits, probably 5 per day like most states.

And size restrictions if public.

It would be tough to fish it into balance with a shortage like that. Was it ever correctly stocked?

https://dnr.wi.gov/topic/fishing/documents/reports/OcontoStarLake2016ElectrofishingSurvey.pdf

It hasn’t really been stocked in years.

I'll defer to our experts, but after reading the DNR report, it seems that productivity may be low. As it is not your personal lake, you probably can't dump money into it.

Do you own waterfront property? If so, check in to feeding the prey species, specifically bluegill, along your shoreline. In time, you'd attract plenty of fish. The sunfish and perch would show up for chow; some bass would follow. I don't know if this would be considered "chumming" in Wisconsin. Chumming is illegal out here in the wild west.

It amazed me that the fish were so small. That may reflect the sampling technique and timing.
Our experts can advise.

Interesting that the lake was stocked with Pike at one point but none showed up in the survey. Below-average Bass and slightly-above-average Bluegill, hmmm.... I'm brainstorming here, trying to figure out why the bass are abundant, but small. Do you know if there are any bait fish? None showed up in the survey. You're too far north for shad, but you'd think some shiners or alewife would've shown up. If the bass are solely relying on eating young bluegills, perch and crappie, could that affect their growth? And the lack of another predator (pike, pickerel, musky) to control the YoY bass might be a factor. Just some thoughts from a non-expert :P

To thin the lmb why not stock Musky. It's my understanding that they will put a dent in the lmb numbers if enough were stocked? You would have to stock a size larger than the lmb could eat but it seems to me by stocking Musky your surviving lmb would grow larger and your Musky would grow to larger size for fishing. Win/Win Maybe stock one per acre.

I thought the Wild West started at the Mississippi. Specifically Minneapolis.

Yes, it is waterfront property and I have began to feed. I do not understand the survey. I'm sure it depends where on the lake it was taken, how far out and how long they spend. I have caught quite a few bluegills bigger than what was mentioned in the survey. Overall the fish numbers seem low. It looks like they also did one in 94 and it shows a walleye and a northern were caught.
There seems to be plenty of habitat especially after last year when a windstorm basically took out all of the trees placing many in the water.
I have been talking to the DNR to remove or reduce the 14" minimum on bass, they have done so on multiple other lakes in the area.

Hmm, I think that could be a problem, too. Too much habitat can actually be a bad thing, because it allows more fingerlings to survive by escaping predation. In your case, there aren't any predators that will eat a baby bass more than a couple inches. The Bluegill and Crappie can eat the small ones, but once they reach maybe 2 inches, the LMB are fairly safe. I think Tracy's idea makes sense, add some Musky or maybe even some Pike again, and should improve both the bass fishing and give a new, large predator that should thrive on the abundant, small LMB.