Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Time to Stock the Pond

Keep a fairly close eye on those bass to see if they are maintaining good Rw body condition as the CNBG are becoming in short supply. Without enough larger sized forage like 1/2 lb bullheads those largest bass may hit the growth limit wall before they reach 10 lbs. Earlier you considered adding gizzard shad. Did you do that and if you did are you seeing recruitment? I can scan back through the older posts.

Okay I see that you discussed (Oct 14, 2013) adding Threadfin and gizzard but never saw where either one of them were added. You also mentioned calling Lusk about adding gizzards - did you ever do that?. I think Lusk will tell you that most 10 lb LMB he sees come from water with gizzard shad. However I am confident that 10 lb bass can be raised without gizzard shad, just maybe not as many/ac nor as frequently.

Are you still adding trout annually? Maybe spring and fall trout stocking will work instead of gizzards? Adding trout will take some of the predation pressure off the BG. Then in summer the bass can eat other things to maintain growth?

Your bass population may be at a growing point where enough big BG are in short supply to adequately keep the biggest bass growing. Possibly just add threadfin at this point. You may have to consider removing some of the largest bass so remaining bass have enough food to keep growing at the same rate of weight gain with the existing forage.

PS- this is a great thread of how to grow bass. Thanks for keeping it up dated.