Pond Boss Forums INTRO New Forum Member Introduction Retirement ponds

I'm Matt. I live in Az where I'm a cop for 7 more years till I retire. I have a family farm in SEOhio that has multiple ponds in varying sizes up to an acre +. The ponds were originally stocked in the mid 90s with largemouth, cats, crappie, and bluegill from family other family ponds. They fished very well, bass of 5lb caliber were present and bluegill and crappie were abundant. I ended up moving out west in 06 and was unable to do any work on the farm thru present day. I have four kids who all like to fish however the ponds just keep getting worse as the years go by. Our retirement plan is to build here. There are no longer any bass over 12 to 14 inches, the bluegill population is minimimal and none of good size. I'm not sure what's taken place over the years. I have a cousin who built on the property and he is interested along with me in rebuilding the ponds to where they once were. I know cover is an issue as there is none, I know there is an issue with population along with slot size bass and bluegill but I don't know why. I'm here to maybe figure some of this out and take a break from all of my whitetail habitat work, at least seasonally. Any resources, reccomendations to get me n the right direction are gladly accepted and thanks!!! Matt

Welcome to the forum! You will be doing a lot of reading in the near future.

If you have multiple ponds, you might want to think about pushing the reset button a few (Rotenone) and starting over with different species in each pond. That way each pond can be managed for those species and it will give you the enjoyment of catching different fish.

For starters, ponds should have approx 20%-25% of the surface area in cover/habitat for the fish. Cover both fine and coarse, so it attracts and holds fish in different stages of their life. If it's a LMB/BG pond, you need to remove 20-25 pounds of bass per year of all different sizes after the bass start spawning. To turn around a stunted bass pond, get cover in there for the BG, maybe look at getting an automatic, solar powered feeder and feed the BG while removing 30-40 pounds of bass of all sizes the first few years that you re-start managing the pond.

There are threads on cover, and threads on what different fish you can have. Depending where in Ohio, Hybrid Striped bass are an option, anywhere in OH LMB. SMB, Yellow Perch, Walleye, etc., etc. are an option.