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Ok last night my son and I put a very small hook on with a tiny piece of worm and bobber fished. We caught 27 bluegill between us in less than an hour and probably missed another 20. All the fish were maybe between 5 and 6 inches long and have microscopic mouths. Is the pond over run with them and should I eliminated some? Pond is over 35 years old, about an acre and a half with pretty decent cover and pretty silted in around the edges but does have plenty of 10 to 11 foot deep water.
You'll probably have to eliminate a lot more than "some". ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by keeferfish
Ponds that size get overrun by small bluegill very easily. PM tnpondmanager and get some advice from him.
DB4D is right...sounds like the Balance is gone in the Bass Pond.
Are there Bass left in the Pond....and any other Predators like Cats?
A few bass most which are also small. Don't catfish much but nice ones do live in there. We have recently started feeding dry fish food and I do have access to a 10 acre lake with a large amount of nice two pound bass. Last year we added about 10 but I'm sure the small ones need to be removed. I'm adding 5 pounds of minnows tomorrow for fish food!
I would definitely talk to somebody like tnpondmanager or your state F&G service. They could give you some good advice.
You basically just have to build the Big Bass Population back up, the smaller Bass can't eat the Medium sized gills to control the population....which means you have to remove all those mid sized Bluegill...enjoy catching, eating, and giving away, as many as possible! :)
Once you get rid of the mid sized 'Gills, the Bass And Channels will keep the population under control as the Big Bluegills spawn....contact a Pond Manager, or there's plenty of good info on the web about Managing a "Bass Pond"...and that's what you have.
If may "suggest' try adding more larger bass and impose a STRICT "catch and release' for larger bass and large cats only. it will take time but in a predator "heavy' environment bluegill either get BIG or they get eaten ! the surviving bluegill will get HUGE and have seen this happen in several well managed ponds. btw it is very easily possible to fish down the top predators but almost IMPOSSIBLE to overfish bluegills due to their very high "rate of recruitment', ie, as fast as a group of big gills are caught and removed other slightly smaller gills rapidly replace them...
you may be looking at a more extensive management plan than simply adding larger preds into the pond. I would suggest contacting a local or area fisheries specialist and let them come and do a survey/count and determine the balance. there are several ways to accomplish what you are wanting to do.
If you want to do it on the cheap, keep all small gills that you catch, return any large predators. I'd be easy on the food until I figured out what kind of plan I wanted to run. you don't want the fish becoming reliant on artificial food when you are wanting them to eat whats in it.
When keeping all of the smaller gills you catch, I recommend freezing them whole. Then give them away on your state home board or to friends to use as cut bait for catfish. You could also try keeping some alive and fishing them live yourself. You may just end up catching a monster flathead or blue.
A friend whom has a 10 acre pond that poachers regularly loot for bass came up with a "novel" solution to "fix" the problem. He had a zillion 3-4" bluegill and almost no bass so at some effort we put in 8 posts with metal HD screened trays on top. we caught dink bluegill after dink bluegill and put them up in the screens doing this 3-4X weekly. got to the point where we were wearing clothes pins LITERALLY and writing down all the trespassers license plate numbers and reporting them to the Sherriff. It took several years and a couple of other "tricks' but in the end helped restore that pond until he sold it off. The majority of those countless dinks became fly food which in turn fed their runt relatives. A couple of weekends we had 15-20 people out there just yanking those runts out and turning them into fish food. the maggots fell thru the screens and "GULP !" were gone in a flash ! Maggots were THE hot bait, obviously...
Add flathead catfish.
Added 5lbs of fathead minnows a few days ago and will try removing small bluegill and bass ourselves and add some larger bass. I'll try to update but it will be a slow process.
Any other ideas welcome and thanks for the input.
would LEAVE the smaller bass... that`s where BIG bass come from !
Try pondboss.com. Lots of great info there on this very subject. The 5 lbs of fatheads you just added are most likely eaten now. While the larger bass will eat some of those 5 - 6 inch bluegill, they don't eat many of the smaller ones. Still need smaller bass to get the small fry bluegill under control.
absolutely CORRECT sir !
Doubt it's working yet but my nephew caught this from my pond on a buzz bait in the rain today.
The bluegill will eat the fish food along with the catfish. You might see how they respond after a year or so. I think there are times the forage base has deficiencies and the fish will stunt even when the population is theoretically correct. I have seined ponds before that were underperforming and expected to find more fish in them then we actually did.
I would advise against putting flatheads in a pond. Flathead catfish are carnivores(eat only live bait), whereas channel catfish are scavengers. In just a very short time the flatheads will destroy every other species.Quote:
Originally Posted by smashdn
He wants to control the bluegill population. A flathead or two will put a dent in that population in no time. I don't think a flathead will hurt the bass population (given the size of the one in the picture) and given the fact he is saying he has too many bluegill.Quote:
Originally Posted by jigflinger
If you have too much weed growth and cover in a pond the bluegill can overpopulate too. They can easily hide from the predator bass. If that is the case a STERILE grass carp can be beneficial.
Flat head eats all the bluregill. And everything else. What's the bass gonna eat? Flat head catfish in small waters is bad news.
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have seen ponds that the owners added 1 (as in ONE and only 1) flathead into to help control over populated blue gills. within 2 years the fish went from 3-5 pounds to about 9-10 pounds and was removed and a newer smaller fish replaced it. it certainly seemed to help along with removing EVERY undersized bluegill caught and putting every bass back in regardless of size...
A 9-10lb flathead would be a welcome guest at a fish fry.
Like little trained dogs they hear my footsteps and swim like little missles towards shore. Mostly bluegill, some small cats and small bass. Don't feed every night or the same time but always just before dark.
Those catfish aren't live fish feeders!!!! Yellow cats eat live fish!!!! Get 10 male yellow cats problem solved!!!!!
Put up a sign or 2 keep out no fishing and set up 3 five gallon empty buckets They Will take care of the over population!!!!!!
LolQuote:
Originally Posted by sharphook
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married a lady and her family had 17 acre lake overrun with small stunted bass, many with wierd shapes and large bluegill, started catching and keeping the 12 - 15 inch bass and lots of the big bluegill and after a couple of years started seeing the bass fatter, more like normal, chunkier and still with big bluegill, just not as many. more in balance and it was in IL and couldn't get the cooperation we get in MO and they wouldn't provide crappie fingerlings and that lake had tons of structure and minnows and would have been incredible crappie lake too.
You need to fish hard for a while, and keep a few hundred bluegill, add some 4lb plus bass, and some larger cats as well. I've got a buddy that's been managing his for a long time and you can really tell. Average gill is 7-9"(usually keep about 150 per year), cats are between 3-14 lbs and we only keep a few a year(have to be over 7lbs) to keep them growing, and you're hard pressed to catch a bass under 2lbs, if we do happen to catch a smaller bass we keep them too. Is there an established minnow population in the pond? If not try adding some brushy structure, and buy a few pounds of minnows each year to add to the pond. If you don't add quite a bit of brush the minnows will swim around the pond in a big school, and get utterly decimated by the bass, bluegill, and cats.
Update: It's getting better the two photos are recent fish caught by my son. We've added some larger bass form my friends private neighborhood lake. We have taken 20 or so small 10 inch bass to a local public lake/pond and will continue this process. We've been supplement feeding the bluegill which have grown larger but haven't yet removed any. I bet if I had a cast net I could net 50 or more per try during feeding time so they my be going for a ride also. We have plenty of minnows and can see them swimming along the edge and it does have some cover but going to add some more. Should continue to improve.
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