Dave D, they stopped feeding the bluegills about four or five years ago.

jpsdad, you are right on with your thought process. The big pond is on its way to what it was back in the early 90's.

jludwig, big bluegills are definitely abundant, but not overcrowded. And their relative weights are about 70. What's interesting about this fact is that bluegills in this part of the country live about 6-9 years. We didn't age any fish, but I bet the largest bluegills are close to that 9 year old mark, thin fish, that were beasts when they were three or four years old.

While big bluegills are abundant, they are in decline due to age and their gravy train went away.

The biggest variable to make this fishery less easy to understand is the coontail. Picture it this way, these ponds were moderately managed up until about 4-5 years ago. Coontail was held at bay. When management stopped, coontail expanded. Big bass continued to grow. Big bluegills reproduced extremely well.

Here's another clue that will help you think through this little conundrum. There were some newly hatched bluegills in our sample, we observed probably 200 age-0, .5-1" long. There were hundreds of bluegills 2-3", also age zero, but probably hatched mid-summer. We collected about 15 3-5" bluegill, maybe from last fall, then 14 in the 5-7" class and more than 35 in the 7-9" class.

Imagine going back to 2015. We'd just come out of a three year drought with 40 inches of rain in 40 days. Each of those ponds were likely three or four feet low. Coontail probably covered about 5-10% of the pond a few months after those spring rains. The drought had confined the fish, bass grew well, bluegills were dynamic and the big ones were in great shape. Habitat was adequate. 2016 coontail probably doubled, covering 10-20% of the pond. That's still okay, not invasive and healthy for baby bluegill and small bass survival rates and growth rates of bigger bass. With a year past that drought, the fishery was probably expanding. By 2017 bass had begun to overharvest bluegills, except the coontail now likely covered 30-40% of the pond and was expanding. Bluegills have a big advantage now. Coontail now dominated the habitat and small fish had the best advantage to hide and survive. Not grow as much, but survive...until they poked their little heads out of that dense mat of plants. By summer of 2018, coontail covered at least 50% of the pond. Bigger bass were kept at bay, not able to thrive. The biggest bass were reaching old age and the younger bass on the junior varsity couldn't get to the dinner table.

Now go back and look at those bluegill ratios again. There are a bunch of Age-0 bluegills, not many Age-1 bluegills and pretty much zero Age 2-4 bluegills. That tells us there was a span when young of the year bluegills were decimated....which would have been 2015-2017, before the coontail became overwhelming. When the coontail expanded to about 40% coverage, bluegills staged a comeback.

But, compare that to the relative weights of the bass and we see the 15-17" bass are seriously underweight. That makes sense. With expansion of coontail as the food chain was being rapidly depleted, it makes sense that size class to decline. What also makes sense is with the big expansion of coontail we see a big expansion in Age-0 bluegills and bass...with some Age-1 bass as well.

This pond is compensating as nature does, it's ebbing after it was flowing.

The smaller pond is about a year beyond what the big pond is. Bass are considerably more underweight, but there are still five size classes of bluegills and the pond has about 70% coverage of coontail.

How did the boat navigate? Most of the coontail had sunk due to recent cold weather, but it was about a foot to two feet under the surface. Getting around was actually pretty easy. It wouldn't have been so easy two months ago.

Here's the recommendations we made to these new landowners.
1) Selectively cull bass. Get the SmartFish App that Wade Bales developed and when you catch fish, log them in. Any fish under 90 needs to come out, regardless of length.
2) Crank up the feeding program again. Bolster the bluegills and help them increase mass. Feed Purina's AquaMax MVP. It's designed for multiple sizes of bluegills.
3) Diversify the food chain next spring. Add tilapia and threadfin shad. Stock crawfish, too.
4) Keep the coontail in check. No more than 15% coverage of the pond.
5) Bolster genetics, if desired. We saw coppernose bluegill as well as local native strains. Bass offered several that have a Florida look...and we'd stocked Florida bass there many years ago. If you want Florida's, it may not be necessary, but does no harm.

With a three-acre pond, selective harvest won't be that tough. They can remove 50-80 bass and start seeing a difference. Relative weights will tell that tale.

So, there's what we did. If you guys have more questions, pitch them and I'll take a stab at it.

Teach a man to grow fish...
He can teach to catch fish...