Bass Infestation of Small Pond

Suburbanite,
I am sorry for repeating your reply. I was a little late.

Bret

here ya go!

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this message has probably been edited to correct typos, spelling errors and to improve grammar...

"All that is gold does not glitter..."

Bass have a tendency to overpopulation and eat themselves out of food.

It's one species that needs a lot of fishing pressure to keep them in control. A high panfish population will help crop of the bass fry. Crappies should be excellent for that.

One season I spawned 18 1-2 pound largemouth in a 1/4 acre pond. I harvested about 41,000 young bass later that summer. There were no other predators other than the parents and I removed them as soon as I saw the schools of fry.

I just wanted to offer that an oldtimer told me that he adds bass from other ponds to his pond,as he feels he needs different gene pools for a healthy population

I've been on General Chat too long...I forgot that you can get some courteous and helpful advice on HT!

Nice Picture Meloc! You have potential!

As of today, I've removed 101 small bass. I've cleaned 64 of them and put the rest in another pond I'm starting on. It's a former manure lagoon on my mother-in-law's former hog farm. it's about a 3 acre pond.

We'll have a fish fry tomorrow night.

I don't know if 101 bass removed will make a difference, but I caught several 12" + that I returned to the water. I'd like to have some trophies in a year or 2.

I'm planning to introduce some blue cats and some hybrid bream. Maybe that will help eat the bass fry. I'm only going to introduce large fish that the bass can't feed on.

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"The most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being." - Sir Isaac Newton
(A REAL scientist)

I am so jealous, I wish I had a pond with fish. Did you make this pond or was it there when you got the land?

I built the pond...I used the farm for horse pasture at first and I had a spring on the place, so I simply dozed out a small pond below the spring so that the horses could drink.

The pond's 11 years old, and I've never really taken an interest in it...except to keep the duckweed out...some of my friends have introduced fish several times. I just started fishing it a little with my son this Spring, and discovered all the small bass.

I'm going to try to make it a better fishery...my boy is 8 now and my baby girl is 6. I want it to be pond that is guaranteed to produce a bite anytime they want to fish.

It's also small enough that no boat is necessary...you can walk around the bank and fish the whole thing.

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"The most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being." - Sir Isaac Newton
(A REAL scientist)

Thanks i needed the help,one of those days .
It is koi and the amurs are triploid white amur .The state record for amur in Iowa i see was 64lb. and 50 1/2".They look big as logs floating around sucking scum off the top of the pond!!
In Pa. we have to get a liscence to let them go in a pond.Or you could go to Ohio pay cash and get all you want,I hear . Not that I would do such a thing It's a beautifull trip to Baltic through Amish country er, so I'm told .
Chas

Soooo - what time is the fish fry? Gonna be any jalapeno hushpuppies?

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"Tough times don't last - tough people do"....

[QUOTE=Jim S.]r.h., you mean the govmint tells you what you can catch out of your own ponds? Why, here in TN, there would be an uprising! I don't even need a fishing license to fish my own ponds here, and what I take is my biz.[/QUOT

No, no, no, jim. You can do whatever you want to on your own pond. I'm just saying that any small lakes, large or small ponds, that are managed by the wildlife department most usually have the slot limit on them. And just about everyone of them that I have fished at have really improved with the slot limit. In fact they will stock your ponds for you (under certain conditions) and they most always recommend the 9-16 slot limit.

Several years ago they placed a slot limit on a nearby small lake that I always liked to fish on. When they first placed the slot limit on it I was totally against the ideal cause I was gonna have to throw back anything that was finally big enough to keep. Before you was very lucky to catch anything big enough to keep. Now you can go there and have some really good pole bending fights. It was definitely worht it.

This reminds me onetime of a fishing trip with my grandfather....We went fishing on a distant relative's land.They had one of those small Corps of Engineers lakes in northern Texas.It was about 10 acres, but we fished in the overflow.It came out of a huge pipe through the ---- and had gouged a small deep hole about 10ft across by 20 feet but about 15 feet deep..My grandfather,myself,my uncle and my aunt filled a towsack full in about 2 hours the majority of the fish were largemouth bass just large enough to filet...The next night we had a large fish fry with most of the family there.A lot of people as my grandparents had 5 kids and there families.But what should have been a happy day turned out sad as we found out as we were finishing up that ELVIS had died...All the ladies were shook up.........I so miss fishing for Largemouth, nothing prettier tha one tailwalking across the top pf the water trying to spit out your hook...That is the thing I probably miss the most living in europe...................Mike