Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations 5.5 Acre LMB/BG Pond

I have a 5.5 acre pond that has LMB and BG in it. It's never been managed before and the majority of the bass are 13" and weigh 0.8 lbs.

We started keeping all bass under 14" this year and actually haven't caught anything bigger... We are trying to take out 200 lbs of bass, but I'm not so sure we will get there.

The BG are mostly smaller as well. The pond doesn't have much cover, so maybe they are just getting eaten before they get a chance to escape the bass.

I'd like to improve the body weights of both the LMB and the BG. I could introduce structure, feeding, GSH or another food source if it would help get the weights up.

Any suggestions?

If you're comfy with knowledge of what is in your pond (such as structure, cover, depths, water quality, and species of fish and average sizes and size ranges) then forage, forage, and forage.

Build some structure to concentrate fish around, add some hiding places for the new fish, and add forage, forage, and more forage

You're North, consider trout fingerlings as forage in addition to the bluegills and yellow perch.

Try feeding your bluegills. I think you will realize benefits from the bottom to the top of the food chain. I also agree with culling those small bass.

If we were to add forage fish, what would be good to add? What size so they just don't get eaten?

Would adding adult YP and GSH do much for us, or are we better off just feeding the BG that are there. YP would be a nice addition to the fishery catch wise though.

On the feeding front, if we put two or three feeders on the pond, would that be enough given its size?

Adding any forage prior to removing at a minimum of 200 pounds is in my opinion, a waste. I'd spend the cash and electroshock the pond next spring when the bass are shallow. That along with angling should give you a chance at removing the needed pounds of bass.

Unless you have decent say 30% or so, submerged vegetation cover, YP will likely struggle to maintain under heavy bass predation. You could stock large stocker size YP to maintain a fishery.

Getting GSH established in a bass heavy pond is tough. I'd stock 5 pounds per acre of brooder GSH in mid spring for best chance at establishment.

I will say that I was some what mistaken on the size of the BG based on what we were catching earlier from shore. Fishing a little deeper this past weekend, we caught 30+ that were 8" or so. I don't know why I didn't weight any, but we will be back this weekend.

We are up to about 45lbs of bass removed after this weekend, so heading in that direction.

The bottom is moderately covered with weed growth, so I'd say we might just have 30% cover already in place. The deepest part of the pond is around 15', we've owned it for 30 years and its never had a fish die off.

IMO That's a great news man! 8 inch BG is a good sign that your forage base is ready to make a comeback. * inch BG spawn a whole bunch of babies, I would keep culling the smaller LMB.

I figured that I'd bump this old thread of mine with a little bit of a report with pics.

We ended up just going down the fishing route to remove the stunted bass. We have been letting the kids fish as much as they want and keep any of the LMB. In the first couple years, it was rare to catch a bass that wasn't a twin of the 13" 0.7 lb bass. They almost all were old and skinny. So we just kept keeping them and eating as many as the kids could catch. We aren't there all the time, so we concentrated on it as much as we could.


Here is a typical weekend when we are there and we send the kids on a mission.





It has taken us a bit longer to get there because we never really hit our goal in a given year, but we were slowly seeing progress. It seems like we have hit a critical mass now as this past weekend while the kids were fishing, they caught several young healthy looking bass that should continue to grow well for us. They caught 4 or 5 to 1 of the old skinny fish. Excited to see how these develop in the future as we continue to remove any of the old skinny fish we catch.

Huntmaster,

Did you decide to feed or just remove bass? What, if any fish, did you add to the pond? I had my pond evaluated and the recommendation was to add 5,000 Coppernose Bluegill, 4”-5” in the spring. I have a pond the same size as yours and have just started feeding in attempt to increase forage fish for the bass.

Thanks, Dean

You're getting there! I'm interested that the pike weren't able to control the bass population.

With a bunch of young kids that have fun catching any size fish, we decided that we would just let them have at it and catch as many as they could. We are only there a handful of weekends throughout the year, so we never really removed as many as we wanted. Even with that, you can see we are getting some results.

The pike are in my one acre pond, this thread is about our 5.5 acre pond.

Lusk says that, after the first year, never return a 12 inch or smaller bass to the water. Cull them so they don't over eat the food supply (bluegills).