Hello,

I've been lurking and reading posts here for awhile now, but just got around to posting. I was hoping I could seek some expert opinions/advice on my pond.

My pond is just under 1 acre I believe and it is probably close to 100 years old if not more. It's an old farm pond. Supposedly the pond was originally built at 20+ feet deep at its deepest point. I last measured its deepest point at arount 15 feet. The average depth is probably around 6 feet deep. There are no weed beds and very little structure except for some old bridge posts and whatever tree limbs have fallen in from the surrounding woods. The pond is stocked with largemouth bass, bream, warmouth, grass carp, and an overabundance of turtles. The grass carp are going on around 10 years old now, and we were told when we stocked them that they would only live around 7. The number of them seems to have decreased but there are some still there and they are very large. My biggest concern is with the largemouth bass. Any weekend during the warmer months, I can go and pull 10-20 healthy 1-2 pound bream out of the pond, and probably around 5-10 bass. However, the bass that I pull out are always under 15 inches and no more than 1.5 pounds. Around 30 years ago a 10 pound bass was caught out of the pond, the largest ever "recorded" from it. Around 10 years ago, a 6 pounder was caught, the second largest. About 5 years ago a 2 pounder was caught. Ever since, I have never seen any bass over 1.5 pounds and I fish this pond every weekend all summer long, from the months of May until August/September. A new neighborhood was recently built near the pond about 5 years ago or so, so I always thought that the bass population may just be decreasing and the pond is just being overfished by trespassers. After some thought on the situation, I am thinking more and more that the bass may just be stunted and I might have an overpopulation of fish in the pond. Could I be right on my assessment that the pond may be overpopulated and the bass are stunted? If so, what can I do to fix the situation and grow some bigger bass? At this point, I am pulling everything I catch out, hoping I'm right and that maybe that will help a little. As far as I am aware, I am one of the only people that fish this pond, but of course we have found traces of trespassers around the pond, so I wouldn't be surprised if other people are fishing it.

Thanks for the help,
Steve