# Stunted Growth?



## Luns (Feb 10, 2010)

Im looking for advice on a topic i cannot figure out with my pond. I have a 3 acre pond stocked with bass, bluegil, perch, crappie, and rock bass. At times there were trout and some walleye too. At its deepest the pond is about 28 foot. It was dug back in the 60's-70's and has been stocked since that time as well. Now onto what i just dont get. I am a bass man and the fish in the pond seemed to have hit a wall in their growth, i can remeber this from when i was a kid, 26 now. Every fish you catch is 10"-14". I know there are bigger fish in there but you may get one or two once a year. I got a 6lb out of it last year and missed another around 6lb. The thing i dont get is there is not a lack of food and it is a healthly fishery, i guess as far as i can tell. Can there be to much food or does it just have a terrible gene base in it? Does anyone have any ideas on what i can do? I obviously know i have to continue to remove the smaller bass i get but what else? If i left out any important parts to answering the question please ask so i can answer and get a better understanding of what may be going on. Thanks.


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## robertj298 (Feb 23, 2009)

Luns said:


> Im looking for advice on a topic i cannot figure out with my pond. I have a 3 acre pond stocked with bass, bluegil, perch, crappie, and rock bass. At times there were trout and some walleye too. At its deepest the pond is about 28 foot. It was dug back in the 60's-70's and has been stocked since that time as well. Now onto what i just dont get. I am a bass man and the fish in the pond seemed to have hit a wall in their growth, i can remeber this from when i was a kid, 26 now. Every fish you catch is 10"-14". I know there are bigger fish in there but you may get one or two once a year. I got a 6lb out of it last year and missed another around 6lb. The thing i dont get is there is not a lack of food and it is a healthly fishery, i guess as far as i can tell. Can there be to much food or does it just have a terrible gene base in it? Does anyone have any ideas on what i can do? I obviously know i have to continue to remove the smaller bass i get but what else? If i left out any important parts to answering the question please ask so i can answer and get a better understanding of what may be going on. Thanks.


I think you probably have more big bass than what you think. You probably just need someone like me to come in and show you how to catch them


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## Snakecharmer (Apr 9, 2008)

robertj298 said:


> I think you probably have more big bass than what you think. You probably just need someone like me to come in and show you how to catch them


Ha Ha....He really just needs me to help him...


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## Luns (Feb 10, 2010)

Ahhh yes it didn't take the comedians long....thanks for your help....id be glad to invite you to show you both how to fish but id rather try and get any true input on the topic....so back to the point please.


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## garryc (Jan 21, 2006)

I spoke to an OSU pond guy last year. He said that he believed that many ponds dug from the 50's through today are heavily contaminated with copper, from using copper sulfate as an algaecide. He said that permanently damages the base of the food chain, bacteria and invertebrates. That's why he said to only use a double chelated copper or something like Green Clean. Copper is a toxic heavy metal.


Here's a link on that subject:


http://www.bassresource.com/fish_biology/algae_copper.html


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## firstflight111 (May 22, 2008)

if it like my little 13 acre play pond ..its a late night bite to sun up..for the bigger bass .. and you can see down 15 to 20 feet the deepest part is 51 fow..and my pond has everthing in it... well almost


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## robertj298 (Feb 23, 2009)

Luns said:


> Im looking for advice on a topic i cannot figure out with my pond. I have a 3 acre pond stocked with bass, bluegil, perch, crappie, and rock bass. At times there were trout and some walleye too. At its deepest the pond is about 28 foot. It was dug back in the 60's-70's and has been stocked since that time as well. Now onto what i just dont get. I am a bass man and the fish in the pond seemed to have hit a wall in their growth, i can remeber this from when i was a kid, 26 now. Every fish you catch is 10"-14". I know there are bigger fish in there but you may get one or two once a year. I got a 6lb out of it last year and missed another around 6lb. The thing i dont get is there is not a lack of food and it is a healthly fishery, i guess as far as i can tell. Can there be to much food or does it just have a terrible gene base in it? Does anyone have any ideas on what i can do? I obviously know i have to continue to remove the smaller bass i get but what else? If i left out any important parts to answering the question please ask so i can answer and get a better understanding of what may be going on. Thanks.


Here is something I was told a while back about pond management . A pond will only sustain so many lbs. of fish per acre. So if you have a lot of fish it doesn't matter if they are bass, bluegill or catfish the fish are going to be smaller than if you just have a few fish. If it were my pond I would start eating a lot of the smaller bass and larger bluegill go get the population down


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## Luns (Feb 10, 2010)

Thanks for the advice guys. Ive already started the thinning process. It just amazes me that with all the food the fish would not grow. Sure some of these fish have grown and beat the average but i just dont get why theres not more. The copper thing has sparked my interest too. I wonder if i should have a biologist come test my water.


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## Lundy (Apr 5, 2004)

Stunted fish growth is almost always, barring something really unusual, over population and forage availability.

How many small bass are there in the pond? how many do you catch on an average day when they are biting well?

I'm guessing you have some decent size bluegill in the pond. All of the young bluegill get eaten pretty quickly by the bass, crappie and perch, until the few that survive get too large for the 10-14" bass to eat. Unless you have bunches of cover, cattails, etc for the baby gills to hide in they don't last very long.

It would not surprise me at all that you might need to remove 50-100 bass or more and depending on your crappie population, maybe a bunch of those also, before you begin to see any significant change in your bass growth rates.

Call a pond management professional to come and survey your pond and develop a real plan to achieve your desired results.


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## Luns (Feb 10, 2010)

Lundy said:


> Stunted fish growth is almost always, barring something really unusual, over population and forage availability.
> 
> How many small bass are there in the pond? how many do you catch on an average day when they are biting well?
> 
> ...


I have thought about getting a professional to come out and take a look. Does anyone have a guess at what a service like this cost though? As far as small bass there are a lot. If their biting well I could catch 30 I bet in a 2-3 hour span.


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## bassmanmark (May 17, 2005)

I fish this lake in Michigan it is called Hall Lake and it is in Yankee Springs. The bass are very aggressive and I have never caught one over 14". So I checked online and the MDNR has done studies of this and it is a spring sourced lake. There is something in the water that doesn't allow the fish to get older than 3-4yrs. Each time they test the lake it produces one or two very large fish (6-7lbs) but the rest are 14" at their largest. Was wondering if you had a similar problem because that is what it reminded me of. There are many lakes in Yankee Springs but Hall lake is the only one that has this problem.


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## robertj298 (Feb 23, 2009)

bassmanmark said:


> I fish this lake in Michigan it is called Hall Lake and it is in Yankee Springs. The bass are very aggressive and I have never caught one over 14". So I checked online and the MDNR has done studies of this and it is a spring sourced lake. There is something in the water that doesn't allow the fish to get older than 3-4yrs. Each time they test the lake it produces one or two very large fish (6-7lbs) but the rest are 14" at their largest. Was wondering if you had a similar problem because that is what it reminded me of. There are many lakes in Yankee Springs but Hall lake is the only one that has this problem.


 That doesn't sound right to me.If there was something in the water not allowing fish to live more than 2 or 3 years, then how do they get the 6 and 7 pounders?


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## Lundy (Apr 5, 2004)

I think it is as simple as way too many bass in the pond


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## bassmanmark (May 17, 2005)

It may not sound right but you are welcome to look it up under MDNR main site under Hall lake fish testing results.


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## Rod Hawg (Jan 13, 2011)

We got a 3 acre lake with tons of Giant Largies and tons of tiny Gills. Pond was built in the 70s. Very murky water clarity. Biggest Bass I've seen was pushing the eight pound envelope. The Gills I don't really care much about. They are pretty much just the Bass food. I think they are stunted so we are slimming them down but we still want to keep the big Bass in there.


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## [email protected] (Dec 22, 2006)

Luns, bass are eating machines. As you may have experienced, these gluttons will stuff themselves until they simply can't fit any more food and will still try to feed after. For a bass to reach it's full potential, every time it opens it's mouth food should be readily available and it should be of ideal size. If you had an unlimited supply of Big-Macs right in front of you and ate all you could, you would gain a lot a lot more weight than if you had an unlimited supply of sunflower seeds hidden all over your house. Another thing to consider is that if you had an unlimited supply of Big-Macs within reach your probably not going to run down to Wendy's for a chicken nugget. 

What's going on with your bluegill population? How are the perch, crappie and rock bass doing as far as Wr?

The perch, crappie, rock bass and 10-14" crappie are all competing for the same size forage fish. These fish are competing with each other inhibiting their growth and using up a fair amount of available resources that could be used for growing bass. The large bass in the pond are likely eating fish from this tier of the food chain which is worst case 1/10th as efficient as if the bass were consuming bluegill directly. On the other hand, there may be plently of big bass but they may not be interested in your bait due to size/type of the presentation.

Rod Hawg, have you considered adding gizzard shad? There is a point where they can be considered and it sounds like you may have reached that point. Your bass have likely grown to these admirable sizes due the abundance of bluegill. Although highly discouraged in the past recent thinking and research is leaning in favor of them in cases where significant populations of large (7lbs+) bass exist. It is far more likely to find a 10lb bass in a BOW with gizzard vs. one without.


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