I have read posts on this forum for years but this is my first post.

I have a 4 acre pond in central North Carolina. My family and I built the pond about 18 years ago. The pond has great cover in deep water and shallow water. We built this pond just for trophy bass. We stocked the pond with fathead minnows and coppernose bluegill while the pond was filling up. After a few weeks we stocked the pond with F1 tiger bass from American sportfish. The results were amazing. 4 to 5 pond bass the second year. Everything was great. Multiple bass over 10 pounds have been caught in this pond. We fed the bluegill with an automatic feeder and still do so today. The last 3-4 years have been puzzling. I noticed that I was not catching many large bass anymore. The bluegill were doing great. Thousands of them all sizes. I continued to take out bass 8-14” and over the last 4 years have not caught a bass over 5 pounds. I began to worry so I have the pond electro shocked. The study showed a great bluegill population however the bass numbers were very low. Only 2 bass were shocked up over 4 pounds. Most bass were 1-2.5 pounds. 1 crappie was shocked up and I have caught maybe 3-4 crappie in the pond over the last 4 years. I am not sure how they got in there. The pond is fed by a large creek with a 10 acre pond above it on the neighboring property. Possibly they came in from there during a flood??? Anyways the low bass numbers and small bass look to be consistent with a crappie influence however I do not feel like that is the case. There is something causing low bass recruitment but I can’t figure out what it is. Does anyone have any ideas??? Could an osprey do damage to a pond like this? I saw one around the pond one time last year. My thoughts on the Osprey was that the bluegill would fall victim just as much as the bass.

I was planning on restocking about 50-75 new 6-8” bass in the pond but no one in my area has F1 tiger bass. I have access to some 8” northern strain largemouth but wanted to go back in with some F1s because of the great success before.

Also last year I removed about 200 large bluegills from the pond thinking there might be an overcrowding if bluegill?? If that even exists?? I have heard it is very hard to overcrowd a pond with bluegill. It just doesn’t make sense to me and I am thinking someone here might have an idea.

So my question is what do you think is causing the low bass recruitment? Also do you guys think stocking new young northern strain largemouth bass would help?