A way to quickly limit some of the bass in the pond is catch and remove the male that is guarding the school of bass fry. Then most of the unprotected fry will get eaten. which will help you 1-3 years down the road.
You don't even have to catch the male - just run it off the nest for a hour. You can also pull a seine through the spawning area which will decrease fry substantially.
Very interesting! I don't recall anyone previously offering that tidbit of wisdom.
Could you achieve the same results from your boat? I am envisioning a boom out of the side with a weighted net, perhaps even cut at an angle to match the average slope of the pond.
If you made two circuits of the pond and then did it again about 3-5 days later, I bet you could significantly disrupt a lot of spawning beds and clouds of protected fry. It really would not be that much effort - as long as all of your brush piles and artificial cover were clearly marked.
I think that would work in an overpopulated and stunted LMB pond. Severely reducing the numbers in one year-class of bass would help both the older bass and certainly help the subsequent year class.
The most common overpopulation problem mentioned on Pond Boss is crappie in a smallish pond. Any chance a pond owner could both successfully time and then disrupt the crappie spawn?
