Need some help from a pond mangement MASTER!

[bait4me]

I have a few questions about a 15 year old pond and how to mange the bluegill and bass together.

Some info about the pond.   It is a 3 acre pond.  It has 3 aerator's.  It is 15 years old, it was stock with bass  for the first 10 years and was stocked with bluegill the first 5 years.  It has not been stock with anything in 5 years.

Now my questions.  I believe that I have to many bluegill in the pond you cant cast anywhere without getting a nibble from a bluegill.  The bluegill really are not trophies at all.  The largest one I have caught is 8inch. So what I was thinking of doing is taking all of the bluegill from 2" to 8" and taking them out of the pond.  I want the pond to be a trophy bluegill lake and bass lake.  What would this do to the bass popluation and growth?

The bass in the lake seem to be doing good as far as heathlyness.  I have notice there are fewer bass every year but they seem to be getting fat er every year.  But I do know that they are reproducing because I will catch a small young bass every so often.  So what would happen if I do the bluegill thing like I said up in the other paragraph?  

All of the help will be great.  I dont know if this is just the cycle of the lake or if the bluegill are eating to much of the forage.

Thanks, the help will be great!!!

[Kevenater]

Best advice I can give you. Visit and join www.pondboss.com Best place on the net for pond owners!!!! Great people there!! They know what they're talking about.

[Grey Wolf]

WELCOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[fishizzle]

Ray Scott has a book or Dvd on it

Sounds like a great place to fish

[BassChaser57]

It sounds like you have so many blugill that they are eating all your bass as they hatch leaving none to grow. If all you have is large bass then your spawn is failing. Blugill will spawn on the full moon every month without an "R" in it so there are lots of hungry bluegill to feed. Take out lots of blugill and see if you get a productive spawn. You will either need to do this NOW as the bass spawn is underway in many southern states. If you miss then you will have to wait until next year to see if you had a successful hatch. Your bluegill are stealing all your baby bass.

Good Luck

[BassinBoy]

You would get big bluegill but the bass would not have many bluegill to eat since the only bluegill would be very large.  To have a good population of both bass and bluegill you need to have a stable amount of them (5 bluegill to 1 bass) take a variety of sizes of bluegill out so there can be big bluegill and smaller ones for forage to the bass.

[bait4me]

So if I need to take bluegill out, how many?  I am just think of forgeting the trophy bluegill lake and staying with the trophy bass lake.  The water temp is about 55 degrees.  Dont bass spawn at 62-70 degrees?  If so I need to start to take blue gill out now.

[BassinAssassin171]

Bass do spawn in those temps.. but it depends on where you are and the conditions. Bass will spawn during a full moon regardless of the temp... or if instincts call, they will force themselves on the beds when you would least expect them to be there (i.e. the other day when it was snowing and I saw bass on the beds (water in low 50's to high 40's).  Generally they will stick to the warmer temps though.  Don't take out TOO many bluegill.  You want to have some big ones in there to thin out the bass population by eating eggs and bass fry.  If your lake becomes over populated the bass will stunt and only grow large enough to spawn.  The mixture of sizes sounds good to me though

[5bass]

Visit and join www.pondboss.com Best place on the net for pond owners!!!! Great people there!! They know what they're talking about.

This is what I would do. Pond Boss built and maintains Ray Scott's famed bass pond.

[XcoM274]

Take out some average gills. About 5 inchers I would suggest. I'd kill 30 tops. One thing though, if you havn't interfered for 5 years the pond should be in rough equilibrium. Eventually, provided you did nothing to it the ratios of species to species will reach an optimum level and production will equal death and consumption. I believe that when stocking virgin water you stock 10 bluegill fry to 1 bass fry. Could be off on that number but its close. Bluegill reproduce quickly yes, but a good sized bass needs to eat perhaps 3 a week to live. Think about those numbers. I fish a 3.5 acre pond up here in Michigan. My buddy and I have sole rights to fish it so we did some monitoring last year. In a 3 acre pond, we figure there are between 75-100 total bass. Up here there isn't much else for them to eat beside the bluegill and they dine on it quite heartily. Last year we pulled a 4.5, 3.2, 3.0 and 2.8, which are real good sized fish for a northern pond. Anyways, I think if we went out and tried, we could catch 75-100 bluegill in a day. There were days when we were fooling around with catching some and pulled 35 in an hour. So there are ALOT more bluegill in the pond than bass. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

[John J.]

Tip: Take out as much bluegill as you can. If there are too many bluegill in the pond they will wipe out the bass population. How? When the bass spawn they lay their eggs right? If the bluegill are outrageous in numbers they will draw the bass away from the nest and devour all the eggs in the nest.

The best bet will be to downsize the bluegill population and restock the pond with bass. It would also be advisable to stock the pond with fathead minnows to ensure that the food chain is in proper balance.

Another tip: Do NOT stock Crappie!!!

[bait4me]

What sould I do some of you are saying take a lot out and some are saying dont take more than 30.  What is a happy medium?

Stocking that lake is out of the picture so the bass are just going to have to eat bluegill and what ever else is in there.

Something just dawned on me I have seen 1 carp and good sized one but only one.  Could he be part of the trouble?

[tyrius.]

Here's how I see it.  Too many bluegill lead to stunted bluegill which keeps them the right size for the big bass to eat.  This will make the big bass bigger.  However, all of these bluegills are going to do their best to eat every single egg and bass fry from each bass spawn so your recruitment (new bass) every year is going to be very small.  Your experiences seem to back this up (lesser numbers of bass, but they are large and healthy).  

If this continues those big bass will likely start dieing of old age or for whatever other reason and with limited recruitment you will not have any bass to replace those that are dieing.

Disclaimer: I am NOT a fisheries biologist, but I have stayed at a Holiday In Express.  Anyways, per the Illinois fisheries management tips one should harvest 50-70 lbs per acre per year of bluegill to keep their population in check.  Given that your bluegill are overpopulated I would go for the 70 lbs and at a 3 acre pond you should harvest about 210 lbs this year.

http://www.ifishillinois.org/programs/Lake_Plant/Tips%20for%20Pond%20Mgmt.pdf

Other things to consider for bass recruitment is the availability of deep cover for the bass fingerlings to hide in during the cold months.  Without a place to hide the older bass will consume the fingerlings.

Anyways, that's my layman's opinion.