Managing overpopulated bass

[NEBasser101]

I live on a private 300 acre pond in NH. It has been known to have MONSTER largemouths. I have caught them too. The only problem with it, is that now the pond has a overpopulation of bass. The average sized bass are around 1.5 - 2 pounds. The pond has the perfect amount of bluegill and even has alewife. The population has just grown too large. Right now you can go out and catch over 150 bass in a day. Most under 2.5 pounds. I have read about culling/harvesting small bass but I dont know where to put them. What are your thoughts? I really want to go out and catch a lot of bass over 3 pounds. I just can't do that know. What can I do to grow larger bass and manage the population?

[Angry John]

Take a few home and have a nice meal

[Bobby from West Ga]

Where we are in Georgia, we have a lot of small ponds we fish, a couple of them are over run with smalls like your talking about, what we do is we go out and catch the smalls and put them In a cooler livewell we made and transplant them to the smaller ponds we fish that are less populated... Congrats on having a 300 acre private pond, that's awesome! Hope you have some luck turning it into what you want!

[IndianaFinesse]

Keep some of the small ones, and if you don't like fish just give them away to someone who does.  I fish in a couple small ponds that are overpopulated with little bass, so I always bring home limit from those ponds and keep some for myself, and give some away to other people that love fish but can't afford to buy fresh fish and don't fish.

[Bluebasser86]

Eat them or find someone who wants to eat them and give them a fresh fish dinner. DO NOT MOVE THEM! Way too many Aquatic Nuisance Species out there to be moving fish around, it's very likely even illegal. We just had another lake here last week that they found zebra mussels in. I promise if you ask around a little you'll find someone to eat them. 

[NEBasser101]

9 hours ago, IneedAnewScreenName-334502 said:

Where we are in Georgia, we have a lot of small ponds we fish, a couple of them are over run with smalls like your talking about, what we do is we go out and catch the smalls and put them In a cooler livewell we made and transplant them to the smaller ponds we fish that are less populated... Congrats on having a 300 acre private pond, that's awesome! Hope you have some luck turning it into what you want!

Thank you

[Hog Basser]

Cull, cull, cull, and cull some more.  With a pond that size, you will need to cull a lot to get the bass population to grow bigger.  I have a 53 acre pond and need to cull around 1,000 lbs. of bass from it each year to grow big bass.  We cull in the 10-15 inch range, but each pond is different.  Here are a few points to get you started:

1. Get a biologist to come out and look at the pond and give recommendations for management, they may even want to electro shock it to get a good idea of the size ranges you are dealing with.  

2. Read the lake management section of this website: http://www.bassresource.com/lake-management/

3. Start keeping a log of all the fish you catch: weight, length, date, conditions, etc.  You can watch the relative weight of the bass and help determine overall health. 

4. Visit the pros over at the pond boss forums: http://forums.pondboss.com/ 

5. Learn some new bass recipes, they are very tasty!  I'm thawing out some now from my last trip to cook tonight!  

Good luck!  

[fishballer06]

Like Hog said, start keeping the little guys in the 10-13" range. You're fortunate that you're averaging 1.5-2 pounders. Most over crowded ponds are full of 8-11" bass (at least around here). 150 fish a day in your range sounds like fun!

Cull out some of the little guys and you should be able to get your average fish up into the 14-18" range. 

[Red Bear]

is the pond actually yours or is there a community of houses around it that owns the pond? just wondering. It will be hard for you to cull enough bass by yourself. personally i'd be happy to weed through a bunch of 2lbers to find that 5+lber...

[the reel ess]

Eat them, give them away and throw them over the dam. And they'll still probably be overpopulated. You may need someone to come in and do a shock survey and possibly remove a lot of small fish. A body of water that size might be too big to manage by just keeping unless you let everyone in. Hog Basser's advice is the best on this thread.

Understand, a lot of places I fish, the average is below a pound.

["hamma"]

Ive got a NH fishing license and would be happy to help you cull out some of them small bass,...lol,.. we could donate them to a local shelter for food, or give them to someone you know, even for a gardens fertilizer, im not choosey,...lmao

 And If its Belleau Lake?  no worries,.. my brother has a house there, and I will be getting there soon anyways.... lol

[scaleface]

If I lived close by I'd gladly remove a hundred or so .