Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations genetically superior fish?

i have heard a lot lately about genetically superior bass where the top dozen or so of each pond is removed and placed in a seperate and distinct pond. is there any truth to this?

secondly, we are ready for stocking in a newly constructed lake in central illinois. it is about twenty acres and it is to be striclty for trophy largemouth bass. all other goals are secondary. over half the cost of the lake was for structure and rip rap. about two thirds of the lake is flooded timber. max depth thirty feet. 1000 lbs of fatheads put in last year.

so the question is...if money was not a concern, what would be the most ideal way to get to the trophy bass. are these genetically superier bass a good route. are there better genetics down south? ultimately, i am looking to find the biggest and best quality of fish? any other suggestions would be appreciated as well. We are considering gizzard shad and crawdads as well. thanks in advance for your time.

john

Hi John and welcome to Pond Boss! Wow a 20 acre lake that's huge.

I'm sure you'll get answers to your questions here.

I don't know what your background is but if it were me and I had that large of a body of water that I was starting with as a clean slate project I'd seriously consider hiring Mr. Lusk (or anyone he recommends) to provide some consultation.

Bob Lusk has also written a great book entitled "Raising Trophy Bass", a must read in my opinion!

Anyway, welcome to pond boss! (Oh and we love photos of lakes and ponds so post'em if ya got 'em).

jmoreilly welcome to the PB forum. You should get a copy of Raising Trophy Bass and a subscription to the mag.

A couple of short answers and then lets see what others say.

No - absolutely no GShad in a new pond.

There is evidence supporting better LMB genetics through selective breeding. There is also a lot of hype. IMO you should get your stocker LMB from the best source locally - as in your area not from Fla or deep south. Strong evidence that southern fish will not do well up north and may not live through the first winter.

You need more than just FH for forage. There are a bunch of options and here are a few of them : GShiners , Bluegill , redears , yellow perch , other lepomis sunfish , and a host of others.

Crawfish are a good addition but get the right kind.

More later.

John, welcome to Pond Boss. I'm going to tear into the "any other suggestions" since it goes hand in hand with a trophy bass pond.

I guess you could try to sort by genetics and raise superior fish. But, you had better be good; real good. And real lucky. As Ewest says, stay with fish that are adapted to current conditions. Florida bass will freeze out in your neighborhood.

The best bet is to stock your sustaining forage base and be patient about stocking predators. Like Ewest says, those fatheads won't last forever, nor are they meant to. I personally believe in the tried and true recipe of common bluegill. Match the bluegill with redears at a 80/20 mix. When the forage base gets so heavy that a bass could fall asleep with it's mouth open and wake up with a full belly, your water is ready for them to be stocked. Don't harvest for 3 years and then take out anything under 13 or so inches. Keep doing it year in and year out. You can't catch them all. Now, this is the STANDARD recipe. It has worked for just about everybody who has followed it with intensity and passion. If you want to fool around with other fish, it probably won't hurt as long as it doesn't have much effect on existing predator/prey relationship.

By now, you ought to be seeing an awful lot of fatheads. If so, your water quality is probably OK. Keep monitoring it and think twice about getting a fish overload of what we call the biomass. Remember that the average water hole can best support about 100 lbs. of predators per acre. That's why you have to cull and keep culling. Catch and release is the worst enemy a bass pond can have.

Summed up, your attentiveness and willing enthusiasm is the real key to raising trophy bass or any other animal. There are very few magic or superior fish. Just superior managers.

Have fun and don't lie to your wife about how much money it is costing. You're gonna get caught.

"When the forage base gets so heavy that a bass could fall asleep with it's mouth open and wake up with a full belly, your water is ready for them to be stocked."



I like that statement Dave. Pretty darn funny!

Jmoreilly,

I would strongly suggest you read Lusk's books before you make a mistake you can't easily reverse. And definitely don't plant gizzard shad until you have at least a good predator population! They can get quickly out of hand and grow to too large of sizes for forage. I've seen some small lakes where they averaged 14 to 18 inches and were just taking up biomass and not doing a damn thing for the bass. Personally I think you wasted money on the fatheads instead of planting bluegills.

I'd strongly advise contacting Bob Lusk, and subscribing to the magazine.

Mr. Lusk knows more about raising trophy bass than you or I can learn in a lifetime of studying. Any mistakes you make early on will be amplified over time.

Twenty acres is too big and costly to renovate every five years. Pay somebody who's been down this road before.

Good luck and keep us informed of any and all progress.

Good advice so far. I'm thinking that with 1000# of fatheads, you can stock some LMB with the bluegills. Ya'll let me know if I'm off base. Hopefully, Mr. Lusk will post on this one.

If money was not a concern, I'd definitely hire a professional consultant for 20 acre water. Bob Lusk might be prompted to go a little farther West than Columbus, Indiana while up North, or to recommend someone local if not.

As long as you're not counting the cost - how about triple-threat forage, seasonally speaking?
-Year round - BG/RES/GSH, perhaps GShad later when your consultant is sure your LMB are ready for them.
-Supplemental Summer forage - TShad and/or Tilapia.
-Supplemental Winter forage - (Rainbow) Trout.
You could add pelleted feed through your forage base to your bass year-round.

thanks for all the welcomes and responses guys. i apologize. i should have mentioned i am planning on adding plenty bluegills as well. we have hired a few consultants in the past on seperate pojects and have had little luck. i get the mag and have watched the vidoes by Mr Lusk and that is why i am here. are gizzard shad a complete no even if we are thinking about stocking 20-30 5+ pounders? also, any comments about transporting fish. we have two other lakes close by. one thirty acre lake with horrible bass fishing and excellent bluegill and crappie fishing. we also have another 60 acre with good bass fishing. both of these lakes are strip mine. they are both close enough to transport. the first lake had been neglected for so long that the bass have stunted. can these fish ever grow again at a normal rate. a boat can catch about fifty a night...all about 12 inches. thanks again guys

one more question...can some large predators (possibly tiger muskies) help the trophy bass population by culling smaller fish. further, do they make they addition of gizzard shad more realistic. as you can tell i have had excellent luck in lakes with a surplus of gizzrd shad. a 1600 acre lake in missouri i fished a lot required 30+ lb (usually not me) bags to take a six fish tournament. they did get a little out of control but a some tigers were added and it worked perfectly.

forgot to ask. ewest, what are the right kind of crawdads?

jmoreilly,

Welcome to PB and while you wait for Ewest's response, here is an old link to an article on rusty crawfish, which appears to be one type you do not want in your pond.

http://www.pondboss.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=6;t=000055

Click on the link in TyW33's post to bring up an article on the rusty crawfish.

Here's another article:
http://cars.er.usgs.gov/posters/Nonindig...rustaceans.html

That's the problems with consultants, any consultant won't do, you need the right consultant. But I stand by my suggestion... see if either Bob Lusk or someone recommended by Bob Lusk will consult on this project. As Bruce stated, fixing a messed up 20 acre lake could be a lot more expensive than paying a consultant to begin with.

I'd like to hear the answer to this question also. That's basically the situation with my pond. Long neglected, stunted bass.

WRT stunted bass growing:

If bass numbers are reduced and forage base is present, both sufficiently, those stunted bass will resume growing. But there are a couple of caveats to go with this.

The stunted bass presently in the pond probably will not ever reach the size that bass in a never-stunted pond will. They've already used up part of their lifespan, and won't live long enough to grow as big as a yonuger, 12" non-stunted bass.

Secondly, there's a lot of thought that if a pond stays in a stunted condition for a sufficient amount of time, the fish may become genetically selected for their stunted state. In a pond managed for big bass, we remove the small bass and retain the large ones, rewarding fast growth and large size with enhanced reproductive rights. In the stunted pond, these (artificial) genetic selectors are not present. There is no penalty for bass which grow just big enough to reproduce and then stop growing, instead expending all their energy on spawning and none on growth.

Perhaps over time this produces bass predisposed to stunt; I certainly think the longer a pond has had stunted bass, the better the chance that it has happened.

IIRC, the course of action usually prescribed is to reduce the overpopulation of bass and improve the foarge base (if needed), then to consider adding fresh LMB genetics (with fish large enough to survive predation from the exsiting bass).

Theo that answer should be placed in the archives along with the links to several of the prior threads on the subject. Then we should turn to a similar one on stunted BG. Call the archive stunted fish and get Bill to do a paragraph intro on why fish stunt. Might help people a lot.

jmoreilly sorry I did not see your question. Russ gave you the info links. Thanks Russ. IIRC Russ first provided that info to the forum some time ago. Use those types of craws that are natural in your area (but not Rusty Craws).

Here is the link to Crawfish as LMB forage.

http://www.pondboss.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=000092;p=1

thanks again guys. how much are we talking to get Mr. Lusk up here for a few days sometime soon?

Call the Pond Boss office and leave a message for Bob Lusk, and/or send him a PM. I don't think he get's to check the forum every day, so the phone call will be the most direct method.

The phone number is on the website homepage.

JM -- I'll try to tackle the hybrid musky question. I DO NOT have experience with tiger muskies in ponds, but have a lot of experience with northern pike. If you had asked me a few years ago, I would have said no way should a pike or musky go in ponds. They eat you out of house and home! While I still stand by that, I have seen just the situation you are talking about -- where northern pike will crop the smaller largemouth bass, keep them thinned, growth will increase, and the size structure of your bass will increase. I'm still leery of this for most ponds, but truly interested pondmeisters can probably make it work. The question with northern pike, of course, is will they themselves reproduce too much (overpopulate). However, your tiger muskies won't reproduce, and you could control the situation by what you stock. I am aware of no research on this topic to give you good guidance. However, remember that the tigers will grow fast. You probably only want a few pounds per acre of muskies. Just for a guess, let's say 5 pounds/acre is your target. That means 100 pounds of tigers in your 20 acre pond. Will they average 5 pounds? 10 pounds? You can see that you will not want very many. Keeping track of what is in there will be your biggest challenge, I suspect.

jmoreilly with that much water (20 , 30 and 60 acre lakes) I would suggest you get Lusk and have him hire Dave Willis as a northern lake consultant . You have a lot of options in your situation that most pond owners do not. One of them may be shocking one lake to get certain types of fish and other types of fish from another lake all to put in the third. There are a more that I will hold off of for now. All of them however require that you first establish a knowledge base from which to work (lake assessments). In your case I think you will also need someone with larger northern waters (lakes /reservoirs) experience .