Revitalizing a farm pond

[Ugahunter2013]

I have about a 4 acre farm pond on our property. It is probably pushing 75+ years old. It was drained last about 25 years ago and stocked with bream and bass. There has been some catfish and carp added since then. The problem we have, as I am sure a lot of other pond owners have, is the size of our bass. All of our bass are small (all are about the same size) and I feel pretty confident that they are overpopulated as nobody really takes any out when they catch them. Will applying liquid fertilizer and fish food help with the growth of the fish any? What are the options?

 

[frankwright]

My friend has a 5 ac pond that we drained two years ago because we let it get out of control. The year before we drained it I caught two over 10lbs a week apart.
Then the fishing got really slow and he brought in a shocking boat and they did a survey. It was just out of wack. The only option was poison or drain and he chose drain as he wanted to make some improvements.
Drained, added an island and tons of pallet and brush cover. IT had bream added first and then later the Tiger Bass. We are catching them up to 2 lbs already.
But the last few years we ate or killed every bass we caught in the 12/13" range and we still did not put enough pressure on them.
You just have to have a deal with anyone fishing to not put small bass back if you want to have big bass.

 

[ryanh487]

Let a few local cub scout and boy scout troops come fish and learn how to clean and cook them. You'll get rid of a few hundred pretty easily.

 

[Hooked On Quack]

My friend has a 5 ac pond that we drained two years ago because we let it get out of control. The year before we drained it I caught two over 10lbs a week apart.
Then the fishing got really slow and he brought in a shocking boat and they did a survey. It was just out of wack. The only option was poison or drain and he chose drain as he wanted to make some improvements.
Drained, added an island and tons of pallet and brush cover. IT had bream added first and then later the Tiger Bass. We are catching them up to 2 lbs already.
But the last few years we ate or killed every bass we caught in the 12/13" range and we still did not put enough pressure on them.
You just have to have a deal with anyone fishing to not put small bass back if you want to have big bass.

Did basically the same thing at our farm pond, anything over 2-3lbs goes back. We added 5 feeders to the pond. Just 'cause the bass is a dink doesn't mean it's a yearling. Catch 2lb bass with huge mouths and eyes that are 5-6 yrs old, fisheries biologist can age a fish.

 

[Nimrod71]

As stated above, drain and restock, or poison and start over. I like the drain model the best. It is hard to beat a good old time pond draining. I see this pond often. The answer is let people fish the ponds and have them take everything they catch with them. It doesn't take long for fish to over populate a pond that is under fished. My grandfather had a 25 acre pond and he let everyone fish and there were always plenty of big fish caught. After he pasted and the open fishing was stopped it wasn't long before you couldn't fish for the bait stealers and little bream and bass.

 

[baddave]

Sounds like the same problem I had. My bream had died off and I got lax on the fertilizer. So i restocked the bream and started fertilizing. Actually the fertilizer has so far slowed down the fishing but am hoping it will pick back up soon. Bream will spawn 6 to 7 times a year and the fertilizer kicks off the food chain. Requires patience. Once you start fertilizing you shouldn't stop bc the fish get bigger and eat more. Its a delicate balancing act

 

[HermanMerman]

There are others here that certainly know more but I will offer up what I noticed at a piece of property I hunted a few years ago. There was about a 2 acre pond on it and you could stand in one spot and catch bass every cast, but they all were no more than 12-13 inches long. We started having a fish fry for one of our meals each time we went down and by the last year we hunted there (10 years total) we were starting to stumble into 2-3 lb fish each trip. It was overpopulated, and I bet you are running into the same issue.

 

[Dustin Pate]

Any bass under 14 inches needs to come out.

 

[Dean]

Check your pH, check harness and alkalinity, then lime and then fertilize as required. Add some bottom structure if the lake is lacking in good structure. You can add crawfish, coopernose, shad, install fish feeders etc but 'generally' you should probably find that your bream size is smaller and limited if the bass have wiped them out. A bass needs 8-10 lbs of food to gain 1lb in weight. Again, without a shock test, you can plan on removing about 15lbs of bass per acre to grow bigger bass. AU fisheries (you maybe able to find on internet search) had a printable scale - basically it showed what a 10", 11" 14" etc. bass should weight in a healthy pond. As other stated, I would start removing all bass 12" -14" or based on a 4 ac pond about 60 lbs of bass.....remove the mouths and increase the food. Similar to managing whitetail for carry capacity....

 

[Coenen]

Put very simply:
Drain and start over with bluegill first then add bass. A couple feeders for the gills and you'll be golden in short order. Once your bass are reaching good size start taking them out in bunches.

Plan on a similar "reset" every 10-15 years if possible.

 

[Robust Redhorse]

The last thing you want is a farm pond overpopulated with bream.

You can out catch and keep 1 pound bass for a good while without causing a problem and it will eventually start giving up 2-4 pounders. (There is probably a few really big bass in there, that can manage to eat a big bream every now and then, along with other things).

A slightly bass-heavy farm pond is the ideal situation.

When a pond gets full of 3-4" bream, you might as well poison it and start over. You can't keep enough small bream to ever reestablish balance.

 

[lampern]

Don't put carp in ponds unless they are grass carp for eating weeds

 

[Stroker]

When I was a youngin growing up in the 50's and 60's I had access to a lot of ponds and lakes and I fished them often. One rule that most of the owners had was if a bream was to small to keep you throwed them over your shoulder up into the grass and weeds, and every bass under 12 inches went on your stringer. Many of the owners had no limit on bream. It was nothing back then to regularly catch nice bass in the 3-5 lb size with 6-8 lb not uncommon. Me and my buddies never really targeted the bass, we were after a full stringer of big gills for dinner, which wasn't a hard accomplishment back in those days. A Zebco 33, a bucket of worms from the worm bed and .50 cents of floats and hooks from Western Auto and you were good to go.

 

[Ugahunter2013]

I realize draining is probably the most ideal way to go, but with as much family is involved (in ownership) of the pond,,,getting everybody on board with that will be next to impossible. I hope that removing bass the good old fashioned way will help? Along, with putting structure, fertilizer, and feed in there.

 

[fishfryer]

When I was a youngin growing up in the 50's and 60's I had access to a lot of ponds and lakes and I fished them often. One rule that most of the owners had was if a bream was to small to keep you throwed them over your shoulder up into the grass and weeds, and every bass under 12 inches went on your stringer. Many of the owners had no limit on bream. It was nothing back then to regularly catch nice bass in the 3-5 lb size with 6-8 lb not uncommon. Me and my buddies never really targeted the bass, we were after a full stringer of big gills for dinner, which wasn't a hard accomplishment back in those days. A Zebco 33, a bucket of worms from the worm bed and .50 cents of floats and hooks from Western Auto and you were good to go.

Sometime in the fifties I think it was,was when the state put a limit of fifty on bream.I remember seeing an old fishing license with that information on it.Memory is fleeting some times.

 

[Ugahunter2013]

Correction: pond is 2.5 acres not 4

 

[lampern]

Sometime in the fifties I think it was,was when the state put a limit of fifty on bream.I remember seeing an old fishing license with that information on it.Memory is fleeting some times.

Doesn't apply to private ponds and lakes

 

[fishfryer]

Doesn't apply to private ponds and lakes

Yes that was understood

 

[buckpasser]

I fished hard as a kid and the two ponds in bicycle range got hammered by me until driving age. I was intimately familiar with them. One pond was clean except for pads and produced tons of skinny, eager bass. There were a couple of old dinosaurs in there, but it was obviously struggling. At some point, someone accidentally introduced hydrilla, probably from lake Seminole on a boat trailer. As it spread, the base weight climbed. Eventually we were catching 6-7 lb fat, healthy largemouth.

Not saying you should introduce weeds, but without off color water and/or cover for prey species, a bass pond is doomed. I’ve been dying the plantation pond black this year to try and buy some time for our bass food. I wouldn’t drain or poison unless I was able to provide all the ingredients listed afterwards. There are plenty of folks out there offering pond management but yes, feeders and fert will help. Good luck!

 

[Ugahunter2013]

Does anyone know if you get someone to shock your pond, if you can scoop up the fish then? Or is shocking only used to give you an idea of whats there?