Keep'em Or Let'em Go?

[jmed999]

I have an 8 acre pond and I catch them between 1 and 7 pounds.

-Is it best to keep the small ones or let them go?

-Is it best to keep the big ones or let them go? (I heard you should keep the bigs ones becuase they eat so much and dont reproduce...then I heard it's best to let the big ones go to help the gene pool of the pond)

Advice? Thanks!

[K_Mac]

It is a great question that is not easily answered. Lake management is dependent on many factors. There are a number of good articles here:

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

[Brand0n]

if your tired of catching small ones let some go

[WRB]

It's a myth that big female bass do not reproduce, they reproduce until they die. Example Dottie, the lake Dixon giant, was caught as a reproducing bed fish at least 3 times before deing. What value would give to Dotties gene pool?

Bass survival rates drop with each year from the time they are fingerlings. Ault size bass have survived and the longer they live the fewer there are and you should protect them.

The size of the pond and it's bass population dynamics should be evaluated by someone who knows proper pond management.

Basically you remove a year class that has over populated the pond, balance is the key word.

Tom

[Dwight Hottle]

It is a great question that is not easily answered. Lake management is dependent on many factors. There are a number of good articles here:

http://www.bassresou...lake-management

Very good advice. Typically in farm ponds there are often too many bass. If the bass your catching are all slack bellied/skinny fish for their lengths then you may have an over population of bass. If this is the case you want to remove all the bass caught under 15". Until the bass population improves. You may need to consider adding bluegill to increase the food population. I understand bluegill can spawn 5 -6 times per year in southern climates. Catch & release in lakes is a very good program but sometimes over done in smaller ponds. Contact a biologist in your area to get further advice.

[Grey Wolf]

Thin out the smaller ones.

[Bluebasser86]

I have helped several friends with ponds that never produced big fish or just very few. We usually just took lots of small, sickly looking bass out and put back healthy looking fish. We also fished for and netting for small baitfish like bluegills and sunfish. Most of them had very few baitfish for the bass to eat so we put in adult bluegills or golden shiners to start producing small baitfish for the bass to eat. Now all of them produce bigger fish, even caught a new pond record at one of them this spring. It would be much more effective to read up on managing ponds and you have to be careful moving fish to other ponds because of invasive species/dieseases. Big fish still reproduce and are extremly valuable to a pond. Every offspring they produce may not grow to be big but they at least have it in their genes to have the potential to grow large.

[Catt]

Contact Bob Lusk @ Pond Boss.com