My advice - keep catching and recording for this year. Catch as many fish as you can...fish lots of different baits/lures. My bass over 12" wont touch a minnnow but they will CRUSH top water baits between June and July, especially frogs. Try some small floating crankbaits for the bluegills along a weed edge. Throw some senkos for bass.

With that water quality, keep an eye out for beds. Observe your number and size of beds, where they are located, how many fish are on them. Fish the deeper water beyond the beds to sample female bluegill. Look out for LMB bass beds and observe the females as they move in - this is by far the easiest way to assess a population of bg/lmb on a pond vs catching them. It will give you a great idea of what your breeding population of both fish are. Keep in mind that the bg will pull off several spawns with other males moving into vacated beds month to month throughout the summer. Mine can pull off a cycle of 3-4 spawns easily. Watch for big bulls around the full moon cycles

Trap some fish with cloverleaf traps that are easily made at home for cheap
[Linked Image from live.staticflickr.com]
attend to them at least once daily if you want to safely release your bg - you might find other species of fish. You can build smaller traps to catch fry or minnow species as well

Log everything, review those logs at the end of this year and formulate a plan.

Oh and start feeding your fish


Mat Peirce
1.25 acre southeast Iowa pond
LMB, BG, YP, WE, HSB, RES, BCP