Welcome to the PB forum. I've worked with lots of ponds the size of yours and with very similar fishes and current condition. Advice has been pretty good for you so far. Here are some of my comments.
1. Firstly we should find out exactly what weeds you are dealing with. If you don't now positively know the weed name you may have to wait for this until weeds are growing in spring to determine the weed specie/s.
2. Look hard into the possibility of adding grass carp to help control the submerged weeds. I am not familiar with fish laws for NY. One or two grass carp once they are 15"-16" in 1/3 acre can often eat about 2 pickup truck bed loads of weeds per year.
3. It appears the pond started out with just LMB. Although it could have started as NY state older literature suggests LMB & golden shiners(GSH). LMB-GSH combs almost always resort to LMB only and all bass become underfed and small due to lack of food.
4. I think you are on a fairly good plan path especially since you do not own the pond. However remember those bass could be several years old and may not ever live and grow much more than 2" longer even with ample foods.
5. As noted keep removing as many bass as possible. Normally a 1/3 ac pond of stunted 10"-11" bass will contain around 24-32 bass. HOW MANY HAVE YOU REMOVED SO FAR?? Get as many of them out as possible. Live small fish work very good as bait for conditioned hook shy bass. Another catching option is to get some night crawlers break them into 2" pieces and feed them to the remaining hook shy bass. When they learn to eat the worm welfare, then on thin 4lb test line, insert or imbed a small hook in a whole night crawler. No weight, no bobber; just line, small hook and worm. You don't really want to spend a lot of good effort of trying to get these old stunted substandard bass to grow. What you really want to focus on are their offspring who will grow normally despite coming from stunted parents. One pair of bass will produce more than enough fry to populate even a 2 acre pond. New offspring bass at low density with abundant food present should be able to achieve 11" to maybe 12" after two years.
6. For an existing stunted LMB population IMO I would not add GSH because the remaining bass will quickly eat every shiner added unless you add 7"-8" long ones and your weeds remain at nuisance abundance to where the shiners have lots of hiding places. A 11" bass can easily eat 200 shiners a year and why spend money on substandard, low benefit producing bass? Remember a shiner brooders have to live a whole year until the next spawning season. Often that does not happen in a bass dominated pond. The wise option is to promote presence of large BG who can survive year to year and produce lots of offspring in presence of a normal bass population.
7. Too many weeds, as in more than covering 30% bottom area and increasing, tend to cause reduced growth of both LMB and BG. Studies show 20%-25% weed coverage habitat favors best growth and production of both BG & LMB. Manage weeds for no more than 20-25% growing on the pond bottom.
8. Getting the LMB and balanced BG will take time as in 2-4 years as compared to completely renovating the pond fishery and starting over next year.
9. Another faster bigger bass option is to remove lots of bass and then buy 8 to 10 6"-8" pellet raised bass who will quickly produce fast growing larger bass of 14"-16" in just 2 yrs. Meanwhile you should continue trying to remove old small bass until you see young 4"-6" new bass show up.
10. Keep adding larger BG. More of the smaller add stock BG of 3.5"-4" will survive as the number of old stunted bass are depleted. IMO try to make sure that all the BG you add to the pond are true pure strain BG. Hybrid BG or green sunfish at this point will have more negative than positive benefits. A Goal - Ideally you want around 20 adult BG for every bass present to produce a fairly good BG-LMB northern pond balance.
11. Once you achieve a better fish balance where you start see yearling 4"-6" bass and BG are spawning with 1"-2" BG showing up and always some of them present then you can start managing / harvesting the fishery to toward one of three BG-LMB balances. 1. trophy BG, 2. more larger bass 13" to 17" bass, or 3. a mixed fish sizes of a general fishing pond
12. If you can get a "handle" on weed control,,,, by all means pellet feed those BG. The added nutrients from 7-10 cups of fish food per week will not cause excessive weed growth. Remember when you have submerged weeds growing normally the pond will not have lots of nuisance filamentous algae(FA) aka green pond scum. Submerged weeds compete heavily with FA for nutrients and keeping it minimal. FA is abundant when submerged weeds are low or absent. BG with regular full bellies of high protein food will produce optimum growth and optimal BG spawn results. If you can obtain a few pellet eating bass, you and they will also get huge benefits of growth and angler fun from the high protein pellet feeding.
13. Until you completely renovate the fishery, I would not spend any time, money and effort on adding smallmouth. SMB and LMB definitely do not play well together in small ponds. Smallies always suffer most with this combination. SMB also do not like eating BG. Also leave out perch. LMB will prevent perch from really thriving in small ponds often to the point of eliminating YP after several years unless lots of submerged weeds are present as abundant dense growth habitat.. SMB work well with YP. LMB work well with BG. Always remember those facts.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 02/08/22 08:52 PM.
