Stunted Farm Pond... How do I fix it?

[Ads7633]

I have been fishing a few nearby farm ponds for about 8 years now. One of these ponds used to be very productive, containing an average bass of about 13-14 inches with several 5-8 (big for Missouri) pounders as well. However, over the years the pond has slowly began to diminish. Right now you catch a fish almost every cast and they all between 6-10 inches. A 1lb fish is now incredibly rare. Now I'm not sure what happened to cause the change, but the owner of the lake has given me permission to pull whatever fish are necessary to help get the pond back to a healthy balance. Does anyone have experience with this? The pond is maybe an 1-1.5 acres. Should I be harvesting every bass I catch? Do the bluegill or catfish populations have any impact on the bass here? Should I let the biggest bass go? Even if they are only 12 inches? And how many bass need to be harvested to make an impact? Thanks guys.

[Bluebasser86]

I have had success with ponds by simply removing every bass like you mentioned, only releasing those rare larger fish or fish that just looked extremely healthy. Thing is, that might not be the answer for your pond. Best thing for you to do is get some advice from someone who knows what they're talking about.

http://www.bassresource.com/lake-management/

[mwh33]

I would let the bigger bass go and take the smaller ones out. We did this at my friend's pond and it worked out well. We kept the small ones in a live well and when we were done we dropped them off at a guy's pond who was looking to stock it with bass.

[Ski]

6 hours ago, Bluebasser86 said:

I have had success with ponds by simply removing every bass like you mentioned, only releasing those rare larger fish or fish that just looked extremely healthy. Thing is, that might not be the answer for your pond. Best thing for you to do is get some advice from someone who knows what they're talking about.

http://www.bassresource.com/lake-management/

This ^^^

Ask a pro.

R/ Chris

[Catt]

Bob Lusk Pond Boss

http://www.pondboss.com

[the reel ess]

Persecute those small bass, man! They are lacking in food.I have taken 50 from my buddy's pond in a day and it still makes no difference. You might need help to put a dent in that situation. If the bluegill are huge, that won't help the situation. You get a large population of lunker bluegills and they're also competing with the bass for food. people have a mental block about eating bass. No need to, they taste better from a clean pond. If you don't want to eat them, give them away. 

But, as mentioned before, an expert will know what to do. A lot of guys feed the bluegills so they reproduce more in the summer and make more food. What you really need is fish in all slot sizes. That goes for the bluegills as well. I fish a couple stunted places and one place with big bass. When I clean fish from the stunted places, there's usually nothing in their stomachs. But when I clean those from the latter, there's minnows, shiners and small bluegills in their stomachs. They have a better food supply and even a variety.

[the reel ess]

I heard from a state fish hatchery operator once that it's nearly impossible to fish a pond out, but it's more likely to pressure the fish so badly they won't bite artificials. But obviously, you don't want all your trophies to disappear. Set a slot size you'll keep. I usually won't keep one weighing more than 3 lbs. But if that's a BIG fish there, make it smaller.

[Gundog]

You also might want to trap some minnows or crawfish from nearby lakes and put them in the pond along with removing some of the smaller bass. I don't think it could hurt. 

[the reel ess]

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=149928#Post149928

[Ads7633]

I actually pulled 90 fish last spring and it did nothing. However I read that you need to remove 55lb per acre per year for a few years to truly improve things. And those 90 bass probably only weighed 25 lbs. 

There is a very healthy pond right a few hundred yards away. Would it be wise to move 3-4 2lb+ fish over to help keep the smaller bass from getting out of control and to improve the genetics of the pond?

[Hog Basser]

5 minutes ago, Ads7633 said:

I actually pulled 90 fish last spring and it did nothing. However I read that you need to remove 55lb per acre per year for a few years to truly improve things. And those 90 bass probably only weighed 25 lbs. 

There is a very healthy pond right a few hundred yards away. Would it be wise to move 3-4 2lb+ fish over to help keep the smaller bass from getting out of control and to improve the genetics of the pond?

It is a total weight per acre thing.  To maintain a healthy pond, it is recommended you remove 25-35 lbs per surface acre per year.  It will be more than that for an already overcrowded pond.  The links posted earlier for the lake management section of this website and the pond boss forum have tons of info on this, study them.  Moving a few larger fish will not usually help.  Fish become adjusted to their environment and often lose weight if transferred once they have become accustomed to a particular pond.  It would be better to clean the whole pond out and start from scratch with some good genetics from a fish hatchery than to use bucket biology.  Younger fish have a better chance to grow and become accustomed to a new environment than older ones.  

Your main problem will be maintaining a forage base.  With all those hungry mouths to feed, it will be hard to get it balanced again.  The large bluegill should be breeding well, but all their offspring will be decimated too quickly with a hungry overcrowded pond.  You can fix it by removing as many bass as possible, it will just take time.  This will also be a consistent effort and can't stop once things start getting better, it has to be ongoing management.  

Remove as many bass as possible first, then you might look at restocking more small bluegill to get the forage base up.  Of course, that is up to the pond owner.  It will take longer for the forage base to recover on it's own.  

[Ads7633]

15 minutes ago, Hog Basser said:

It is a total weight per acre thing.  To maintain a healthy pond, it is recommended you remove 25-35 lbs per surface acre per year.  It will be more than that for an already overcrowded pond.  The links posted earlier for the lake management section of this website and the pond boss forum have tons of info on this, study them.  Moving a few larger fish will not usually help.  Fish become adjusted to their environment and often lose weight if transferred once they have become accustomed to a particular pond.  It would be better to clean the whole pond out and start from scratch with some good genetics from a fish hatchery than to use bucket biology.  Younger fish have a better chance to grow and become accustomed to a new environment than older ones.  

Your main problem will be maintaining a forage base.  With all those hungry mouths to feed, it will be hard to get it balanced again.  The large bluegill should be breeding well, but all their offspring will be decimated too quickly with a hungry overcrowded pond.  You can fix it by removing as many bass as possible, it will just take time.  This will also be a consistent effort and can't stop once things start getting better, it has to be ongoing management.  

Remove as many bass as possible first, then you might look at restocking more small bluegill to get the forage base up.  Of course, that is up to the pond owner.  It will take longer for the forage base to recover on it's own.  

Yeah, one of my main issues is that I'm not the owner, and the owners want good fishing but are more or less indifferent and highly unlikely to spend money sticking, and draining the pond to start over is probably out of the question. So I kind of am limited in my means. I think just getting a ton of fish out of there is probably my only choice.

[the reel ess]

34 minutes ago, Ads7633 said:

I actually pulled 90 fish last spring and it did nothing. However I read that you need to remove 55lb per acre per year for a few years to truly improve things. And those 90 bass probably only weighed 25 lbs. 

There is a very healthy pond right a few hundred yards away. Would it be wise to move 3-4 2lb+ fish over to help keep the smaller bass from getting out of control and to improve the genetics of the pond?

That is addressed by Pond Boss as well. But the short answer is you won't keep the small bass under control once they're established. They're hungry and faster than large bass and will chase and gobble up the food. I guess it would help if you did both things at the same time.

[Hog Basser]

Just now, Ads7633 said:

Yeah, one of my main issues is that I'm not the owner, and the owners want good fishing but are more or less indifferent and highly unlikely to spend money sticking, and draining the pond to start over is probably out of the question. So I kind of am limited in my means. I think just getting a ton of fish out of there is probably my only choice.

Yep, that's it.  Just remove, remove, remove.  It would be best to keep a log if you can, so you know what you've done so far.  I do this managing my own pond and refer to it often.  Record length, weight, date, conditions, etc.  You can judge the health of the fish by following the directions on the attached document I got from the lake management section of this site.  

Fish Wr Value.docx

[senile1]

The Missouri Department of Conservation provides PDFs to manage new and old ponds for different types of fish. The link for managing for trophy largemouth bass (below) tells you how many pounds of fish to remove and how many forage fish to add per acre.  You can find pricing for stocking bluegill on the Internet as well.  Removing small bass and adding small bluegill is what it boils down to in most cases.  What typically happens is the bass become too numerous, eat all of the small forage fish, and you are left with bluegill and sunfish that are too big for the small bass to eat.  Adding forage fish to a 1.5 acre pond will probably run around $1000 - $1500 more or less.  Since your landowner isn't likely to spend money your only choices are to remove fish, or go fish somewhere else.   

http://mdc.mo.gov/sites/default/files/resources/2011/05/trophy_bass.pdf

 

[BassObsessed]

I know how you feel . I fish at a private 10 acre pond that has depths of 30ft and has been established for over 20 years and still is loaded with 1lb bass. Bluegill over 2lbs. Would take ALOT of work to fix this one.

[IndianaFinesse]

You only removed 90?  I would recommend keeping every bass under 10 or 11 inches until you start to see an increase in the size.  Another bonus of keeping the little guys is that when the bass are small they actually taste pretty good, kind of like a big bluegill.  You also might want to purchase some (a lot) of forage fish, as the fish in your pond sound like they are stunted from lack of food.