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Thread: Caught a nice bass in my little lake

  1. #1
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    Caught a nice bass in my little lake

    I have an 11 acre pond/lake on the farm. It makes for an incredibly huge distraction from getting work done around the place.

    Got this guy about 3 weeks ago. Would have been a pretty tasty meal, but I put him back in for another day.

  2. #2
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    Re: Caught a nice bass in my little lake


    Nice Fish! [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

    Bird may come a visiting er Fishing! [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

    Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

  3. #3
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    Re: Caught a nice bass in my little lake

    That sounds like a nice sized pond. [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]

  4. #4
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    Re: Caught a nice bass in my little lake

    About 4 years ago I built a small pond using dirt excavated for making a walkout basement to make the dam. I let it age for over a year after it filled up in less than 30 days after finishing the dam. I then stocked it with fathead minnows and 200 4 inch channel cats.

    This fall we fished it for the first time and as an overflow event this spring brought perch from the pond upstream we caught several pesky little perch but when we cast out little pieces of artificial worm out in the middle or baited with live grasshoppers and cast out in the deep water where the perch were afraid to go we hooked up with catfish. My BIL and I caught 5, released one, and made 4 into dinner for 4.

    Here is one of them showing some growth since planted at 4 inches. I did feed them daily starting a couple months before catching the one in the attached snapshot.

    I didn't put a ruler in the picture but to put things in perspective, I just measured my wrist for a watch and it is 8 just a hair under 8 inches in circumference. I estimate the fish to be 16-18 inches long. I tossed him back. His cousins were tasty.

    It is fun to watch the feeding frenzy when you toss in a half gallon of floating catfish food pellets. To foil the perch and help keep them stunted to give the catfish a better shot at them I will start feeding floating food that is much larger pieces so the perch can't get it in their mouth. A PhD biologist buddy of mine uses Wally World house brand dog food (large kibble) that floats to feed his channel cats. He says the nutrition is fine and pound for pound is cheaper than 50 lb bags of catfish food.

    Pat
    "I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"

  5. #5
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    Re: Caught a nice bass in my little lake

    Nice catfish Pat! They are a lot of fun to catch. Put up a great fight.

    Dry dog food should work fine. Excellent alternative if you can get it cheaper than fish food. Just try to get as close as you can to the same protein content of the commercial fish food. Don't want to go much lower OR higher.

    Just curious, when you say perch, do you mean bluegill, green sunfish or yellow perch? Do you have a picture of one that you could post by chance?

    How big is your pond? What's the average depth?

  6. #6
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    Re: Caught a nice bass in my little lake

    KELLENW, I originally stocked with 200 each 4 inch channel cat. I have removed 4 by fishing. I don't know how many survivors there are but there are a lot of them greater than 12 inches in length (typically estimated at 14-18 inches in length.

    I am familiar with several fish variously called bream, bluegill, sunfish (red eared and others) and some other of that genre and crappie too. There are also hybrid bluegill, pumpkin seed and who knows what else.

    I took a quick Google on Perch and am not sure now if the fish that were washed into my catfish pond during spring and early sumer upstream overflows are in fact yellow perch. The jury is out on that.

    So now I have a mystery fish which I'd just as soon not have had in this pond. I wanted all the fathead minnows as food for catfish. Oh well, life is what happens when you are making other plans. With any luck feeding the catfish larger kibble will get the food to the catfish and not into the X-fish. Hopefully this will help stunt the X-fish and make them more accessible to the catfish as prey.

    Next year I may sponsor a fishing tournament at this pond were catfish are not allowed to be taken but with prizes for the greatest number of X-fish caught in an hour, during the tournament, by a team, by an individual, etc.

    I was told that multi-day interruptions in the daily feedings of large catfish will motivate them to go after available prey with a little greater enthusiasm. Don't know if htis is true or not but may try it next year. Water is too cold now,I think, and I quit feeding when a good quantity of fish food did not attract any observable activity in surface feeding, cats or X.

    Average depth.... ???? Hmmm I don't know. The pond is sort of tear drop shaped with the dam at the fat end of the drop but on one side of the fat end not opposite the "tail." The deepest part is in the center of the big part of the drop and is about 15-17 ft. The bottom is rounded like a bowl. The depth trails off as you go out into the tail (turns into seasonal creek and overflow from my pond upstream of this one. I have no cover or "structure" in the deep end. I placed some boulders (used bulldozer and 4 ft bucket trackhoe) into the shallower part to create some cover. One of my winter projects is to cut up some 4 inch and some 6 inch PVC and toss it into the pond to act as "brood boxes" for nesting fish. I might toss in a few cedar trees too.

    Pat
    "I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"

  7. #7
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    Re: Caught a nice bass in my little lake

    Pat, if we have Yellow Perch in Texas or Oklahoma, I never saw any. The first time I saw a Yellow Perch was when I was fishing one day just south of International Falls, MN, in August '92. I didn't even know what they were and had to ask the campground manager. To me, they look more like some kind of bass than a sunfish/bream/bluegill/perch. But they were quite tasty for supper that night. [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

  8. #8
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    Re: Caught a nice bass in my little lake

    Bird, Maybe one day I will get a picture of the X-fish and all you more fish smart folks can tell me what it is. So far I can say for sure it isn't yellow perch or any of the other species I mentioned (I think.)

    They are a PITA because they attack your bait or lure when retrieving it though "their" territory (shallow water.)

    Pat
    "I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"

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    Re: Caught a nice bass in my little lake

    Pat:
    Chances are using the right sized hook you could catch most of these unwanted fish and transfer them to a desired location! [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

    Egon. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

  10. #10
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    Re: Caught a nice bass in my little lake

    Egon, maybe and maybe not. Do you recall a statement to the effect that if you marched the Chinese army 8 abreast at standard military cadence into the sea and they drowned that you would never run out of Chinese because they could replace that number on a continual basis?

    There are several hundred of those beggars. Seining would reduce their numbers more effectively than making a job out of fishing hours a day to clean them out. But miss one pair of breeders and the nightmare begins anew. Rotenone would fix the problem until the next overflow but I don't want to lose the catfish.

    A good fix would be to drain the first pond in the sequence and make sure there are no surviving fish, using rotenone or not depending on personal desires. Then when that pond is nearly full of water again, drain the catfish pond till it is low and seine the catfish out and transport to the upper pond. Then remove all other fish from the catfish pond by either rotenone, a fish fry, or putting them in the next pond downstream in the chain of ponds.

    Now I could seine in the uppermost pond and put half of the fish back into the original catfish pond leaving me with two ponds having only catfish. Add serious quantities of fathead minnows to both ponds and live happily ever after with two catfish ponds that are immune to overflow transport of undesired species. If the first pond ever overflowed fish to the second pond it just wouldn't matter. I could lose some catfish to the third pond in the chain via overflow but I don't care. I don't really fish all that much and consider the ponds as landscaping and cattle watering supplies. So if things would be unbalanced by my moving the X-fish to the third or fourth ponds in the chain it wouldn't bother me much. There are some big bass in the 4th pond who would probably be pleased to see the X-fish.

    Pat
    "I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"

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