Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking 1 acre pond something is wrong

im hoping you guys have some ideas
my dad has quite a few ponds on some land and the second biggest one is about an acre maybe a tad less. anyway this pond used to be amazing used to have bass of all sizes and you could always count on catching a couple for fun, in the last 2 or 3 years nobody wants to fish there because they tell me they cant catch anything and if they do its very small. i thought maybe they just couldnt fish so i made it my mission to see whats up, also i fed the pond floating feed all last year and had bluegill coming up every day, so the last couple months as the bass everywhere else are great this pond i consistently cannot catch anything, ive gone and fished it about 10 times in the past 2 months, fished with lures, small lures, worms and bobbers, then i got the jon boat and my casting net, after a while i caught one 7 inch bluegill, also a buddy did catch one 8inch largemouth bass. so all that said, im thinking that the otters have cleaned the pond out and i need to restock it, i guess im wondering if anyone has had this happen or has an ideas as to how a really good pond could go to being terrible in a year or 2 also i know that no human fished it out, i was thinking i could stock 100 fingerling largemouth and 200 or so bluegill, and maybe in a couple years itll be back right. any ideas let me know.

also i do fertilize all our ponds with granular fertilizer and i try to feed floating feed every day or every other day,

We've had a really nice pond, with super great fishing in it, cleaned out in under a yr by otter.
The reason there are a few small ones left, very likely, is because there aren't many left, and the ones that are are a little more wary, they've moved on to easier pickings, like your other ponds, I would be keeping a pretty close eye on them, to avoid more of the same. and they will start with your biggest fish first.

thats terrible to hear, we have had these ponds around for years and never seen an otter then last year my brother was able to get a otter out of the pond if u know what i mean, but i think theres def more around i need to make sure they are gone from this pond before restocking.

cg,

Here is a link to an old otter thread.

Pond Boss - Otter Thread

The OP thought he had one otter, and got at least six!

Another poster is pretty sure they cleaned out both of his ponds.

However, there have been many other posts of otter wars where our side won!

I'll see if I can find any of the good ones. (Some of them are in the long-running "What did you do at your pond today" thread, which is harder to search and link.)

Here is one of the good threads on trapping, if you have to go that route.

Pond Boss - Trapping Otters

Good luck getting your pond turned back into a good fishery!

If and when you restock, and your goal is to grow larger bass vs. larger panfish, you need to stock Bass to Bluegill at the rate of 1:30. Bass need to eat a LOT of food to grow, and only stocking a couple hundred bluegill will not be anywhere close to being enough. If you want to grow larger bass in that "maybe one acre" pond, don't stock more than 75. I'd say don't stock more than 50, but I'm betting some get eaten by the LMB that are in there now.