Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Carrying Capacity versus Pond Size

In the end what you really "may be" after is good fishing. So there are number of ways to define what that means, good fishing, I mean. Ultimately you will decide what that is and then manage for that goal.

But lets say you want nice sized LMB in your BOW. Unless you feed them directly, you will probably be limited to around 60 to 80 lbs of them. So a 1/4 acre pond can only support say 15 to 20 lbs. But there is no reason a 1/4 acre pond can't do that. But it is more difficult, I think, because small bass fill niches very similar to bluegill. The extra littoral (relative to size) is habitat for little bass and they can do a lot of damage even at sizes we are uninterested to harvest. 6" to 8" bass can starve trophies. The interesting thing about predators is that they most commonly eat prey that are near 1% of their weight. 2 standard deviations lie between 1/6 and 1/5 their length. What this means, however, is that a 8" LMB eats as many BG as does an 8lb LMB. Every BG the 8" LMB eats is a BG a bigger LMB cannot later eat. So lots of littoral and edge will produce more BG and more <8" LMB too. In this regard, a lot of edge may be too much of a good thing ... because extra edge favors smaller bass and is a powerful influence in small bodies of water.

You can circumvent this by not letting the LMB breed. If one controls what goes in (young females) and ladder sustainably the LMB in the 1/4 pond can grow large. For example, 2 LMB laddered every other year harvested after 6 years in the pond might average 3.5 lbs/individual and exceed 6 lbs in their 6th year. Under such a scenario, the 1/4 acre pond doesn't limit the size of LMB or prevent trophies from being grown. Those numbers are conservative I think especially on good soil.

By far the most effective way to feed LMB is to ensure appropriate sized BG are plentiful. This is made easier by having individuals (LMB) spread across different sizes and ages. This reduces bottlenecks of forage sizes because they are eating different sized prey. On the other side, having the right amount of YOY reaching these sizes can also be manipulated by making space for them by harvesting BG that have grown too large to eat and have attained biomass exceeding the optimum for reproduction.