Pond is approx 3/4 acre in Tylertowm, MS Added plenty of structure (rock piles, synthetic trees (made with 4x4s and 1 inch tubing), pallets, limestone and gravel patches, sunk 5 Christmas trees last year and added another 12 trees this year) I fertilize pond with Perfect Pond Plus last year (just started this year 3 weeks ago) Feed bluegill with feeder min of 10 seconds a day, upped as the water temps increase (doing 24 seconds a day now done over 3 feeding times, 6 seconds each at 7:00AM, 12:00PM and 7:00PM) I was using Optimax Bluegill up until 2 months ago and switched to Nutrena (36% protein, 4% fat) from Tractor Supply I am in the process of switching back to Endurance, but waiting on my order to be shipped. Hopefully I will have by this weekend. Added 2000 bluegill and 3000 FHM in Feb 24 Added about 75 adult bluegill from a neighborhood pond (5-6 inches ea) in March 24 Added 75 F1 Tiger bass from American Sportfish in July 2024, I only wanted to stock 50, but ordered 75 because I thought some would die in shipped. All 75 survived. Added 1500 Golden shiners in March 2025 Seemed like some fish spawned as I was seeing a lot of baitfish in the shallows in early March this year and late summer last year. Goal is to produce bass 6-7 pounds, possibly an 8 pounder would be my dream
In early spring of this year the bass I was catching were almost all over Relative Weight, even some at 120-130% and all were really fat. Now the past few weeks the ones I have been catching have been pretty skinny. In fact one I had caught and tagged several months ago lost weight and grew maybe a half of inch in 4 months. They have all been like that lately, very skinny compared to what they looked like at the beginning of spring I harvested 6 bass at the beginning of April to start to take a few out. 5 of the 6 I cleaned had eggs in them. Bluegill seem to be feeding at feeder like normal and seems like I see good numbers of them 4-6 inches. I used to get a lot of bites on small crankbaits or small jerkbaits from bluegill and catch a fair amount, but don't seem to catch many anymore. It seems to me like all the bass have eaten most baitfish that is under 3 inches. I still see a few small baitfish in the shallows, but nothing like I was seeing.
I plan to take out another 10-15 bass that seem to be the smallest RW over the next few weeks. And was thinking of adding some more Golden Shiners as a supplement (2000). Do you think I should add some more adult bluegill as well? I know small ones will just be a meal for these hungry bass.
Any ideas to add to my plan? Or should I do things different?
Ideas and advice are always very welcome and very much appreciated from me.
120% WR for a pre-spawn F1 doesn't sound as good as it should be to me. Lots of dense habitat will provide 2 things-good amounts of survival of small BG and ambush points for LMB. BG, GSH are the only forage fish if I read right? And, they need to be available at all times in all sizes. Some other forms of correctly sized forage would probably help, and less competition for each. I think I would strongly consider some threadfin shad as another alternative in your area, crawfish could be another option. I think F1's will grow 2 lbs +/- a year with adequate forage.
When I stocked them, the bluegill were 1-1 1/2 inches. Same for the bass, maybe 2 inches or so.
Judging by the eggs in the bass I caught and the water temp, I would assume that the ones that had eggs spawned, but I am yet to see any bass fry.
If I were to stock some threadfin shad at this time of the year, would any spawn? Or would they just be a supplemental snack for the bass?
We have a hatchery about an hour away that only delivers shad via their transport truck $325 per 1000 plus delivery fee.
The water temp this weekend was in the mid-60s
I guess I am worried any forage will be eaten before it gets a chance to reproduce, but that is always the case. But that may be a good thing, just costly.
Your fish were setting the bar last Fall. The greatest climate adjusted growth I had yet to observe. So don't panic.
You need around 15 to 16 LMB to meet your goal in your 3/4 acre BOW. It depends on the survival of your original 75, but you probably have too many surviving to now. I don't like that 5 of the 6 culled thus far are females. Would like to see you picking hard on the males. Keep in mind that both males and females can exhibit high (and low) RW. So learn to sex them. Not perfectly. But if you are correct 90% of the time, that is good enough to skew the population sufficiently to put things in your favor. Use the straw method to identify sex. Your fish should be large enough to reliably sex. They need to be around 11 to 14 inches for this method. Do a search of "Practical Field Methods for Sexing Largemouth Bass". Read it thoroughly to understand the method. Whatever you do, (for time being), do not select LMB with red swollen papilla to cull. Those will be primarily female. There may also be females that will not be exhibiting that feature. If you think 50 survived, set a goal right now to cull 20 males over the next couple of weeks. Get set up to handle fish carefully. Maybe set up a table and a big yeti ice chest (as a live well) and handle with care. But work hard to catch as many as you can. Sex them using the broom straw method. If one sexes male. Filet it and see if you correctly identified the sex. If you did, then you are on the right track. Kill each male you catch. If you do this, please report your findings as I think many will gain from this experience.
If it sexes female, consider marking it uniquely. Some members have been tagging, and if you plan on doing that, tag the fish that you have identified as female. A work around to tagging is to uniquely clip 1 or more of the 9 dorsal spines. When clipping a spine, just clip the upper 1/3 of it. That unique clipping can tell you who she is and you can track her growth. If we have dates and weights, we can track how she is performing adjusted for climate and also track how individual fish are tracking relative to each other by understanding their growth relative to the climate model bench mark.
You live in the South and your fish are trying grow at amazing rates. They will do that, provided there is enough forage. But this fast growth necessarily means that you have to be on the fast track in terms of anticipating population adjustments. You can reach your goal in 3 years where someone in Minnesota will take 6 years. They are on a much faster track. Feel free to reach out by PM anytime.
It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so - Will Rogers
With what you stocked there should not be a forage shortage in the first 2 years. I think you need more info. LMB can easily lose 25 to 30 % of their weight during spawning.
TFS often don't do well in small ponds as the plankton base will not support them and the other fish as well.
I'm with ewest on this one. I am currently in this same predicament. I called Bob last week in a panic Don't worry about it first time spawn stress. It's not forage related, don't be adding forage just because the fish are all the sudden smaller. report back in June and I bet things have turn around
When I stocked them, the bluegill were 1-1 1/2 inches. Same for the bass, maybe 2 inches or so.
Judging by the eggs in the bass I caught and the water temp, I would assume that the ones that had eggs spawned, but I am yet to see any bass fry.
If I were to stock some threadfin shad at this time of the year, would any spawn? Or would they just be a supplemental snack for the bass?
We have a hatchery about an hour away that only delivers shad via their transport truck $325 per 1000 plus delivery fee.
The water temp this weekend was in the mid-60s
I guess I am worried any forage will be eaten before it gets a chance to reproduce, but that is always the case. But that may be a good thing, just costly.
We stock threadfins in southern KS right now.. The 1st and 2nd reproduction hatches will also spawn. This is where I said dense habitat is needed and why. Survival of a few creates billions in a short period of time that grow quickly to useful sizes. Had a truck deliver TFS that most had died.. several blew eggs in the tank. Beings they made the trip, they were dumped, eggs and all in an existing fishery. 2 months later the pond was full of TFS. 2nd note: a fish that has skinny condition, yet has eggs, is full of primarily "blanks". If condition is not optimum, eggs are not either. If a fish is "X" length, it had to achieve "Y" length to get there at or above 100% WR. if it's low for it's length-depending on the time of year- It's lacking forage or the ability to ambush without expending more than the return.
EDIT: I started this reply prior to several posts above so there may be a conflict in what I said. We see great results from threadfins but not super small ponds. We have done some in 1 ac ponds with decent results depending (AGAIN) on habitat situations.
Mark out an area on the ground that is 80'x80'. Now think back to all the cover that you put in the pond. Will that cover fill that 80'x80' area? I'm guessing no. If my guess is correct, then those fish in the pond are marathon runners and not couch potatoes. You need to add more cover in the pond for them. They are burning too many calories swimming around trying to catch dinner.
Additionally, the forage fish should be roughly 1/4 to 1/3 the length of the bass. If the forage fish aren't growing to keep pace with the bass, then the bass have to expend more energy to catch "X" amount of calories than if they had the correct sized food.
Mark out an area on the ground that is 80'x80'. Now think back to all the cover that you put in the pond. Will that cover fill that 80'x80' area? I'm guessing no. If my guess is correct, then those fish in the pond are marathon runners and not couch potatoes. You need to add more cover in the pond for them. They are burning too many calories swimming around trying to catch dinner.
Additionally, the forage fish should be roughly 1/4 to 1/3 the length of the bass. If the forage fish aren't growing to keep pace with the bass, then the bass have to expend more energy to catch "X" amount of calories than if they had the correct sized food.
I will ask since I have seen a similar situation in my pond. Fish are pretty well documented in various posts on this forum. From first fish catch (1 year ago today) up through March 1,2025, 60 LMB have been weighed and measured, of those 60, 55 of them were over 115% RW. Only 1 way under 100%, from April 1 - today, 8 LMB have been weighed and measured. Of those 8, 7 of them were under 100%, I’m pretty confident that the cover didn’t just magically change and the forage base has no holes in it from FHM up to almost 1# CNBG. At feeding I can see at least 6 different size classes of BG along with FHM and GSH from 1” up to 7” long. In the mean time, my original stocking was 150 LMB and 50 SMB. I have caught more SMB in this time from than I have LMB and the SMB are growing like weeds. The SMB I’ve caught have been thicker and wider then the LMB My daughter even caught a LMB this weekend, the second she saw it, she said, what is wrong with this fish, it looks so skinny, I’ve never seen a fish in this pond look so bad. photo is from tonight
Jason, a few days ago when reading archives here, I noticed a post by Dr Dave Willis with regard to RW. He said the RW tables are based on 75th percentile fish. So the standard weight is not the average of the samples of a given length class. It is well above the average. To grow at maximum rates, fish will most often have RW well above 100. But isn't necessarily always the case. Some outliers gain weight just as fast but do so on a longer frame.
LMB are not gluttonous, but they grow pretty fast when forage is abundant. They don't waste forage but rather use it as efficiently as they can within the limits of their individual growth. There is a limit to how fast they will grow and on any given day it depends largely on the temperature and whether they were able to consume enough to fuel that individual maximum growth. High RW LMB are consuming often enough that their blood metabolites remain above some minimal level that allows excess consumption to be stored for later. Fish with lower RW feed less frequently enough that are either unable to store the additional energy or possibly have had to rely on the stores they previously packed away.
When studying conversion of fish in LMB, I came across some weird stuff. It was remarkable how well LMB convert fish and it seemed possible that LMB could make gains in excess of what they could if growing on forage if they were fed a feed comprised solely of fish meal and fish lipid. Just to give you an example. Over a grow out period of 120 days, a 1 lb LMB consuming 1.5% of its body weight of a feed comprised sole of the dry components of Gambusia would gain from 1 lb to over 25 lbs. This of course isn't possible. We know it won't grow long enough to weigh 25 lbs. So the obvious understanding that arises from this exercise is that the premise is false. LMB either will not feed continuously at 1.5% daily on dry GAM AND/OR if they will, they will only metabolize what they need to fuel their individual potential for growth. So here is what I decided. I decided the later is the most plausible and that a big 1.5% meal of dry GAM would probably delay its feeding response for a considerable time.
In optimum forage theory, we assume that consumers adopt behaviors that optimize efficiency. If this is true, then LMB should consume no more than they need to grow at their individual potential. In thinking about this, trying to work out all the potential pitfalls and holes, here is how I decided to understand LMB foraging behavior.
An LMB's internal growth mechanism tries to maintain its blood metabolites within a range of levels. There is threshold below which an LMB will be stimulated to forage. After consuming prey, it may continue to forage if the prey was small ... but once it has consumed enough prey to bring its blood metabolites above that minimum level it will terminate foraging to handle its consumption. It is during handling that most of the digestion occurs. There seems to be a limit as to time rate of metabolization. IOWs this seems to be limited by the metabolization of foods required to fuel the LMBs individual potential for growth. If more is consumed than can be metabolized before evacuation, then some of the energy will be unused and exit in the fecal matter. If this is so, optimal foraging theory suggests that LMB will adopt behavior that will reduce this waste.
Now, after this background, on to what I think your question was. I think there is another minimum threshold for blood metabolites that lies below the threshold for foraging. This threshold is the lowest level of blood metabolites needed for metabolism (including foraging activities). As this level is approached, the LMB will access the energy stores of its own body and use them to fuel foraging activity and other basic metabolic function. The LMB loses mass when it does this. In fish that grow at maximum potential, this happens infrequently, but when consumption falls below what is required for maximum potential growth, an LMB may be from time to time accessing its body mass for energy and would most certainly have less excess consumption to store on its frame.
To Eric's point of spawning, there are two potential ways fish lose weight (thus RW). One is the loss of gametes expelled in spawning. The second is the loss of body mass to fuel metabolism during a period of lower consumption. The potential of loss over a period of 2 weeks when abstaining from consumption may surprise you. For the past 2 weeks ... in your climate ... the daily consumption of BG to fuel metabolism is ~1.3% of body weight daily. So if they haven't been eating due to spawning activities, then they could lose that same percent of bodyweight each day of abstinence (given Kitchell found the energy density of LMB and BG are the same). Over 14 days that is ~ 17% of body weight. That alone would take a 115 RW LMB to 95 in 14 days even if the gametes had not yet been expelled. Fish will recover from the rigors of spawning but if they are not in sufficient condition they may either not spawn or be weakened so as to die from the activity.
One last note. How often fish are consuming prey depends on density of the prey. In the spring, consumable prey is at a minimum and could be below the thresholds needed to fuel maximum growth. The greater the numbers, the greater the frequency of opportunities. Also, the relative ease with which varying sized prey can be successfully captured is important to the frequency of consumption. The right balance of numbers, encounters, and successful attempts is what leads to the potential for maximum consumption and thus maximized growth.
It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so - Will Rogers
The amount of knowledge on this forum is amazing. You guys really know your stuff and I am very grateful you share it with all of us. And as I continue my journey I am humbled by just how much I DO NOT know. I am just a simple bass fisherman and deer hunter that seems to do OK building habitat, growing and harvesting mature deer. I have done a pretty good job with the deer, so I set my sights on doing the same with bass, on a working man's budget. I love the challenge of building and managing my very own bass pond and am grateful everyday that at least on the weekends, I can do something and have something that I truly enjoy, other than my children. I appreciate everyone's input and insight very much.
With that being said I will try and follow as much advice as possible and my plan is this:
Calm down, don't overreact. Bass are still growing, just now at the level when they were first introduced. I am pretty positive they ate every fathead minnow in there, which is what the fathead minnows job was to be, an easy meal for hungry, growing small bass. Also, if my bass did spawn, I understand that takes a lot of energy. I have caught plenty of post-spawn fish with that same look over the years. (usually trying to gorge themselves on shad to make up weight.)
Add some more habitat. I have a few more christmas trees to sink and need to find me some rocks to make some more piles as well as being creative and making some new stuff.
I have done some reading on sexing bass and am anxious to see if I can apply what I have read and take a few male bass out. (all though it seems like what aliens do when they abduct humans and probe them, but I won't go into that.)
I may add some golden shiners and possibly some threadfin shad just because, hopefully some will make it past the hungry mouths and produce a few more.
And finally do a seine survey and actually get a better idea of what I have.
And keep doing what I am doing, feeding good fish food and fertilizing and enjoying what I have.
Very good discussion on the growth progress of Springtime LMB in the 2nd year, low RW, how to evaluate forage and the foods needed by LMB for metabolism and growth. Topic was added to the Common Q&A Archives under the heading of: LM Bass Info Stocking, Growth, Management
Last edited by Bill Cody; 04/29/2504:11 PM.
aka Pond Doctor & Dr. Perca Read Pond Boss Magazine - America's Journal of Pond Management
Mark out an area on the ground that is 80'x80'. Now think back to all the cover that you put in the pond. Will that cover fill that 80'x80' area? I'm guessing no. If my guess is correct, then those fish in the pond are marathon runners and not couch potatoes. You need to add more cover in the pond for them. They are burning too many calories swimming around trying to catch dinner.
Additionally, the forage fish should be roughly 1/4 to 1/3 the length of the bass. If the forage fish aren't growing to keep pace with the bass, then the bass have to expend more energy to catch "X" amount of calories than if they had the correct sized food.
I will ask since I have seen a similar situation in my pond. Fish are pretty well documented in various posts on this forum. From first fish catch (1 year ago today) up through March 1,2025, 60 LMB have been weighed and measured, of those 60, 55 of them were over 115% RW. Only 1 way under 100%, from April 1 - today, 8 LMB have been weighed and measured. Of those 8, 7 of them were under 100%, I’m pretty confident that the cover didn’t just magically change and the forage base has no holes in it from FHM up to almost 1# CNBG. At feeding I can see at least 6 different size classes of BG along with FHM and GSH from 1” up to 7” long. In the mean time, my original stocking was 150 LMB and 50 SMB. I have caught more SMB in this time from than I have LMB and the SMB are growing like weeds. The SMB I’ve caught have been thicker and wider then the LMB My daughter even caught a LMB this weekend, the second she saw it, she said, what is wrong with this fish, it looks so skinny, I’ve never seen a fish in this pond look so bad. photo is from tonight
While the cover didn't change, the fish did. So, cover with smaller openings that the LMB would use when younger might have holes too small for the bigger LMB to effectively use to hide in for ambush cover.....
Your fish were setting the bar last Fall. The greatest climate adjusted growth I had yet to observe. So don't panic.
You need around 15 to 16 LMB to meet your goal in your 3/4 acre BOW. It depends on the survival of your original 75, but you probably have too many surviving to now. I don't like that 5 of the 6 culled thus far are females. Would like to see you picking hard on the males. Keep in mind that both males and females can exhibit high (and low) RW. So learn to sex them. Not perfectly. But if you are correct 90% of the time, that is good enough to skew the population sufficiently to put things in your favor. Use the straw method to identify sex. Your fish should be large enough to reliably sex. They need to be around 11 to 14 inches for this method. Do a search of "Practical Field Methods for Sexing Largemouth Bass". Read it thoroughly to understand the method. Whatever you do, (for time being), do not select LMB with red swollen papilla to cull. Those will be primarily female. There may also be females that will not be exhibiting that feature. If you think 50 survived, set a goal right now to cull 20 males over the next couple of weeks. Get set up to handle fish carefully. Maybe set up a table and a big yeti ice chest (as a live well) and handle with care. But work hard to catch as many as you can. Sex them using the broom straw method. If one sexes male. Filet it and see if you correctly identified the sex. If you did, then you are on the right track. Kill each male you catch. If you do this, please report your findings as I think many will gain from this experience.
If it sexes female, consider marking it uniquely. Some members have been tagging, and if you plan on doing that, tag the fish that you have identified as female. A work around to tagging is to uniquely clip 1 or more of the 9 dorsal spines. When clipping a spine, just clip the upper 1/3 of it. That unique clipping can tell you who she is and you can track her growth. If we have dates and weights, we can track how she is performing adjusted for climate and also track how individual fish are tracking relative to each other by understanding their growth relative to the climate model bench mark.
You live in the South and your fish are trying grow at amazing rates. They will do that, provided there is enough forage. But this fast growth necessarily means that you have to be on the fast track in terms of anticipating population adjustments. You can reach your goal in 3 years where someone in Minnesota will take 6 years. They are on a much faster track. Feel free to reach out by PM anytime.
I have read back through this and was reluctant to comment, but... if you're going to try and sex bass, might as well do it correctly. You need a fresh water tank for captured bass. then you need a 70 qt container with chemical to sedate the bass in or you will damage the fish, either by puncture, slime coat removal or breaking the cath tube off inside fish when it flops.. Depending on the size of fish, you need a specific cath tube size. Fish that are not sexually mature are nearly impossible to sex as you will destroy sexual organs trying to insert cath tube. There are 2 times a year you can do this, pre-spawn and mid to late fall. A vinyl top table is best. Soak a bath towel in 100% salt saturated water and wring half of the water out. Place towel on table. BEFORE sedating a bass, have at the least, a 5 gal bucket with 100% saturation of salt slurry ready. Place a bass in 70qt container with sedative, fish will roll to it's side and stop moving when under. Pull fish, invert on towel and work cath tube very carefully into urogenital passage in a twisting motion with very little pressure. angle will be 15-30* forward-not straight down, sometimes an angle of 45* is needed to get it to enter properly. Twist with light pressure until cath tube seems to bottom or strong resistance is felt. Cap tube with finger tip and extract. If done correctly, you will see egg color in the last 1/8" or so of the tube. In males, 99% will show a clear liquid, very seldom will you see sperm. Place fish in salt container for 10 SECONDS and then move to fresh water. Fish will right itself in 3-5 minutes. Rinse cath tube in 12-15% H2O2 and rinse in fresh water before next insertion.
I appreciate the comment Snipe and especially the details of the method you are employing. Thank you for sharing this.
I am a bit reluctant to comment further but I think it will help to provide context that after reading you will agree. I don't really see one method being "incorrect" and another "correct". A positive ID is extremely important if the sex has to be known. For example, if a person is attempting a female only BOW, positive ID is essential to prevent the misidentified males that slip through other methods. In such a case, I do see a method that positively identifies sex as a correct method. Some have utilized otoscope, which is more invasive due to the incision ... but if a fish is to pit tagged ... the incision can serve a dual purpose.
There are benefits to skewing a population of mixed sexed LMB to be primarily female. I recall Bill commenting that a population can recruit with 10% males. This a little greater than the failure rate of the straw method. Various methods employed by suppliers of fish who will supply sexed fish typically result in failures of identification (unless positive identification is employed). But if skewing a mixed sex adult population to be 90% female is a goal, the methods and the failure rate of such sourced fish is consistent with and supportive of that goal.
I guess what I am trying to say is that there are variety of methods that can be employed which efforts support respective but different outcomes. Some are more practical than others for people with varying goals and skill sets. Of great importance is to have a method that is effective enough to meet the goal and that is practical enough that one will employ it. What we don't want to do is be terribly wrong about the sex of the fish we remove or release. It would not be acceptable to remove 5 females for every male for very long. The opposite would be very helpful and conducive to a trophy BOW.
It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so - Will Rogers
Thanks for the input Snipe and jpsdad. I do have the "recovery tank" at the pond by using an ice chest with an aerator in it. But after reading you comments, I am no way prepared or educated enough to do proper sexing without harming the fish. I will refrain from doing that part of my plan. But will do some tests on bass I catch from the wild that I intend to filet anyway and try and get a grasp on the process.
Once again, the knowledge here is remarkable. And I am very thankful.
Snipe, thanks for taking the time to write up that procedure.
I usually perform sex identification of LMB during the filleting process. I think your method will probably work better for re-stocking the fish back into the pond following identification of the correct sex of the fish!
With all the discussion on LMB feeding and growth note that none of it is straight-line application. Fish feeing and growth (they are cold blooded) is cyclical - dependent on water temps. Almost all growth and much extensive feeding is done during optimum temp range. Temp controls metabolism - feeding, digestion and everything else.
Over the past 2 weekends, I have been doing some work.
I added 3000 golden shiners of various sizes, 3-5 inches
I have relocated another 10 bass that were under 12 inches and skinny. I did catch a few that were pretty healthy and released them back. I attached a picture of a 1 lb 8oz, 13 1/2 inches that was pretty healthy. My goal is to take 20 out total, I am at 15 now.
I have also switched back to Optimal Feed now that I can get it as Endurance Feed now.
I added 6 spawning discs filled with pea gravel made from round plastic snow sleds (I forgot to photo those)
Sunk my last 3 Christmas Trees
Added 6 more PVC trees (built with 4x4s and PVC as pictured)
And went bluegill fishing. I could easily have caught as many as I wanted, but did catch about 20 of all sizes from about 3 inches up to the big one in the picture (8 inches and 7 oz) this was probably one of the bigger ones I stocked last year that was 3-4 inches when stocked.
I feel like I am headed in the right direction now.
.gif)
