This was a couple of hours on Saturday
That’s a good clean out! Looks like the pond is over run with small bass, need a good clean out! make them grow
Yep I have 18 acres in three ponds. The little bass area a problem. Anytime someone is fishing I ask they either keep them or throw them out.
That’s a good day’s fishing and a nice fish fry right there!
Some decent size Bluegills in the mix as well. Often when the bass are over populated the panfish are stunted.
I was just reading some comments & an argument on a facebook page for catch & release never damaging a fishery. This photo would certainly prove that argument incorrect!
I’ve seen it too in a private pond that I used to fish. Most of the Bass, Bluegills & Crappies in it were small, just too many of them and not many folks fishing it.
Might try stocking the ponds with thread fin shad! Its like giving them super vitimins!
I always found the argument about whether catch and release was damaging or not to be laughable. Catch and release is merely one form of management. There isn’t one type of management that fits every occasion. Fact is, you can practice catch and release in conjunction with selective harvest. It doesn’t have to be one way or the other. I do it all the time. There is a 90 acre pond I fish in Aiken County. We regularly keep bass between 12"-16" but release everything under and over that. We do something similar with sea trout. On my boat, we release everything 20" and over but will occasionally keep fish under that (but over the legal size, of course). Personally, it’s not a matter of catch and release, specifically, being damaging or not. It’s more a matter of mismanagement most definitely being damaging. In that picture, there’s only one bass I would’ve thrown back. Well, that and any that were under 12".
As bp suggested, the quantity and quality of the available bait plays a huge role in how you should manage a fishery as well.
“You don’t always know where you stand till you know that you won’t run away.” ~Slipknot
It’s not talking crap if you can back it up…and nothing can back it up better than facts.
Bangstick, good reply! In that discussion, I mentioned that fisheries biologists have said in some waters that C&R could be damaging to a fishery and got blasted for my remarks. One fellow even made a very disparaging remark towards me personally for my comment stating that C&R can never cause damage to a fishery. I told him to re-read what I had said. Any body of water can only handle a certain biomass. Otherwise, it’s not healthy for the fish and they can’t grow to their potential.
Like you, I believe in good & proper fisheries management, and feel it’s usually in the best interest of a fishery to let the biologists do their jobs. On private waters, that’s a different situation, but the same idea applies.
The idea that C&R is always proper, to me is ridiculous and I said so in that discussion. There were some folks involved there that mentioned that they do harvest some fish to eat, and they got blasted. Nothing wrong with harvesting some fish, and as you’ve said, within the legal limits.
I do some of both, C&R most of the time, but certainly will keep some fish to eat when I want & when it’s legal. That discussion started with bass being the topic, but ended as trout anglers got involved & took it off on a tangent with their reverence for trout species.
Some folks put way too much reverence, like it’s a religion, on specific fish species too which adds to the problem.
No doubt. That daggum green fish makes people get stupid sometimes. Lol!!!
“You don’t always know where you stand till you know that you won’t run away.” ~Slipknot
It’s not talking crap if you can back it up…and nothing can back it up better than facts.
Those 1/2# - 3/4# bass are fantastic scaled and fried whole! Doesn’t take long for a pond to get over stocked with Bass and then you end up with a bunch of stunted fish unless you are feeding the heck out of em and then you’ll probably need aeration.
Thanks for posting.
May Full moon is the 18th, my favorite time for Bream and Redbreast.
Fred67, I used to fish a couple of state owned ponds back in MD. One pond was near the road, about an acre in size and the other tucked in the woods behind the first a bit over an acre, with a ditch connecting them. They got a lot of fishing pressure, but held some decent size bass. Each spring, before it got too warm, they stocked them with hatchery trout, for put & take. They had also stocked them at some point with catfish. These ponds held some Bluegills and Pumpkinseed Sunfish, but most were stunted and only about 3" to 4" long.
So, I think the food base for the bass, was mainly the panfish and the stocked trout. There was some spawning with the bass, evidenced by smaller bass each year. The back side pond had a number of willow tree’s growing around it, and there were some small islands, which I believe were left from digging sand or gravel at some time in the past, and they all had willow tree’s growing on them. The back end of the back pond was probably about 8’ deep. This gave some good shade & cover, but made it more difficult to fish. No boats were allowed, only shore line fishing.
Well, MD has had a problem with Beavers for many years now, and they invaded those ponds. Last time that I was there, I saw two small bass, each about a pound to 2 pounds, on the only nest that I could find in the back pond. The willows were gone, and there was a beaver hut in the back pond. Much of the water was gone too. There were no signs of any other fish in the back pond that I could see.
The front pond still had some stunted panfish in it, as nests could be seen in one corner, which had a sand bottom. My guess was, the state stopped any stocking once the beavers moved in, and the only forage left was those stunted Sunfish and any insects, tadpoles, or other critters that came along.
These ponds went from a place were potentially a few 4 lb or bigger bass could be caught, to nothing but a mud hole, mainly due IMO, to mismanagement, and allowing the beavers to remain.
The real shame is, IMO, the MD DNR