Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Caught a couple nice bass lately...

I'm seeing some success in my pond (1 3/4-2ac). I've removed most of the Black Crappie - saw none in usual spawning spots this spring - maybe because bass seemed to start spawning in April and took over all the usual spots. I caught maybe 20 - most small from last years spawn. Previous years I'd catch a dozen or more nice ones on a good day during the spawn. My goal was to remove the crappie as they seemed to be having a negative effect on the bass fishing with not much recruitment and mostly low RW fish.

I've removed 25 bass - mostly all the males guarding spawning sites. Seemed to have thinned out most of the under 14" bass. Last week I caught a 4'10oz bass on a BG shaped swim bait and today I caught a chunky 4lb bass on a frog.

One thing I've noticed this year is that there is a LOT more bass fry - have a massive school of thousands of them hanging out around some structure I placed in the deep end. I'm a bit concerned I might have an explosion of small bass once these grow up.

Seem to have a lot of good size BG - not so many smaller ones which is one reason I decided to thin out the little bass. I have a pair of 2lb bass that hang out under my dock that I feed. They opportunistically started eating BG I would trap and move from a small pond on the property. Lately I've been feeding them frozen crappie that I chop up into smaller pieces. When the crappie were biting they would also eats 6-7" crappie that I'd cripple and throw to them.

I'm wondering if my remaining bass will do enough to remove this years bass crop or if I will have to go after them in the fall with an ultralight?

Little bass are very well shaped to fit into the mouth of slightly larger bass.

I think the early hatchers and "jumpers" in your numerous new crop of bass will thin out the numbers somewhat of the little bass. As that entire class gets larger, then the bigger bass will start doing their share.

OTOH, culling a few bass on ultralight tackle never hurt anybody!

nvcdl, crappie typically spawn first so their YOY eat later YOY BG and LMB. Thus, you will likely have greater LMB YOY survival once crappie are knocked down. Harvest!

I've heard this theory that the crappie fry eat bass fry but I've never seen clouds of crappie fry attack bass fry. I suspect that it it older crappie who feed on bass fry and knock the schools down fast. When I first got this pond I'd estimate there were 300 or more 7" -9" crappie in it and I can see why bass recruitment was minimal.

Noticed my first two clouds of bass fry today with the males hovering nearby. They must have hatched over the last few days as before that the males were guarding the eggs - last few days the males have been in area but off the nest.

Seemed like the bass spawned earlier than the remaining crappie this year - last week the crappie seemed to be in spawning mode and I caught one 10" and about 7 small crappie - since then no more crappie have hit.

I've pulled out 10 small bass so far this year. The bass seem to be doing pretty good - went bass fishing a few days ago with tube lure and caught 6 - a 4lb, 3lb, a couple in the 14" range and a couple 10" ones that I removed from the pond. I'd like to see them get chunkier as they are not super fat.

Nice report!

Any idea how long the 4lb bass was??

A way to quickly limit some of the bass in the pond is catch and remove the male that is guarding the school of bass fry. Then most of the unprotected fry will get eaten. which will help you 1-3 years down the road.

I am NOT a Relative Weight guy, but these are my fishing observations.

A female LMB right before the spawn is at her largest RW of the year (obviously). The males right after they have been guarding the nest for an extended period may be at their skinniest for the year.

I am not positive that RW measurements taken at this time of year are necessarily indicative of the health of the bass population.

(All of the more knowledgeable people feel free to correct me or expand on this comment.)

Exactly correct. RW is a good tool but understanding its limitations is important.

You don't even have to catch the male - just run it off the nest for a hour. You can also pull a seine through the spawning area which will decrease fry substantially.

Very interesting! I don't recall anyone previously offering that tidbit of wisdom.

Could you achieve the same results from your boat? I am envisioning a boom out of the side with a weighted net, perhaps even cut at an angle to match the average slope of the pond.

If you made two circuits of the pond and then did it again about 3-5 days later, I bet you could significantly disrupt a lot of spawning beds and clouds of protected fry. It really would not be that much effort - as long as all of your brush piles and artificial cover were clearly marked.

I think that would work in an overpopulated and stunted LMB pond. Severely reducing the numbers in one year-class of bass would help both the older bass and certainly help the subsequent year class.

The most common overpopulation problem mentioned on Pond Boss is crappie in a smallish pond. Any chance a pond owner could both successfully time and then disrupt the crappie spawn?

According to Lusk, about 95 percent of all the eggs laid never get old enough to spawn. They get eaten. But, there a lot of eggs.