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Re: Stocked some fish at the lease..... [Re: Mr. Clean] #6703573 03/12/17 11:51 PM
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FishmanDan Offline
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I used old fence posts and hardware to build mini docks for my feeders:
Feed the bluegill and cull any bass under 12-14" and you'll see great results...

Re: Stocked some fish at the lease..... [Re: Mr. Clean] #6704365 03/13/17 09:53 PM
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Red Cloud Offline
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Very nice bass! What is the forage base in your tanks?

Re: Stocked some fish at the lease..... [Re: deewayne2003] #6705184 03/14/17 05:57 PM
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Originally Posted By: deewayne2003
Good looking fish..... Just remember that its always cheaper and easier to harvest bass than stock minnows; most ponds & lakes will be AWESOME for 3-4 years after stocking bass and then the bass over populate and quickly deplete the baitfish population.

1lbs bass weight = 10lbs of forage fish; so every 1lbs bass that you harvest is like adding 10lbs of minnows to your forage base - last time I checked minnows were $10-lbs, so you save $100 for every base under 15" you harvest vs. stocking bait fish. While every pond is different a general rule of thumb is to take 10lbs of the most common size bass your catching per surface acre out of the pond.

Depending on how often you go out to the lease, it may be more beneficial for you to lime and fertilize these ponds vs. setting up fish feeders.


This is good advice. You should harvest roughly 20 pounds of bass 14" and smaller per surface acre of water each year starting now. This is the #1 most important thing in managing a private fishery.

I would also recommend that you stop adding the minnows each year. Fathead minnows are stocked in the initial stockings of lakes to feed the fingerling bass until they grow big enough to start eating sunfish, but are of little use in an established lake. No reputable lake management company would recommend adding fatheads to an established lake. If you want to add forage fish, you would be much better off adding coppernose or tilapia.


"God made man, but Samuel Colt made them equal."
Re: Stocked some fish at the lease..... [Re: Mr. Clean] #6705250 03/14/17 07:35 PM
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If you get serious look up a relative weight chart for bass. If you start measuring all the bass and compare to the chart you will get a pretty good feel of your growth rate comparatively. But just judging from those pictures you are off to a great start and those are nice fatty's.

I would agree with the above statement that it would be best to fertilize prior to adding other fish. We added tilapia last summer but the way things worked out I never fished the pond after stocking them. So this weekend we get to see how much that has helped.

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