Caught a nice bass in my little lake

[Pat]

kellenw, Now, you are painting a rather rosy picture that is certainly tempting. The major drawback that I see is the loss of catfish fry and fingerlings from LMB predation as well as probably wiping out my fathead minnow population.

Still, restoring things to my preferred mix AFTER the LMB experiment would be just adding fathead minnows and a batch of small (not sure what size) channel cats. I'll have to get advice on the size/numbers of catfish to stock, if any to optimize the situation.

The down side (collateral damage/side effect) of the LMB experiment would be a starving group of same sex LMB and no little catfish or minnows if I let the experiment run to a natural conclusion, assuming the LMB wouldn't eat much dog food (which is not substantiated yet.) Still it wouldn't be too hard to reintroduce fathead minnows and if recommended by competent authority, some small or mid size cats after fishing out the LMB.

I hope the LMB will not be eating much large kibble floating dog food. I think they are carnivorous not omnivorous (comment?)

Your suggested plan needs to be used in conjunction with some consideration for the pond upstream of the catfish pond. The population of X-fish in that pond is the source of the problem and when that pond overflows we will be back at square one again. The simplest approach may be to drain that pond, provide suitable disposition for all the fish of interest, and then rotenone the reduced volume and restock with only fathead minnows and channel catfish after it has refilled with water.

The drain and or drain and rotenone approach and then restocking with fathead minnows and channel catfish for the upper most pond (immediately above the catfish pond) will help ensure the protection of the catfish pond from recurrence of the current problem. Then I will have two catfish ponds. Not my original plan or desire but acceptable to avoid a repeat of the current problem.

All my other ponds are a dukes mixture of species and seem to do well enough. Some are quite productive of healthy mid size LMB, some fat crappie, and various sunfish and turtles.

Funny thing about turtles. Lots of the folks around here shoot them when able, claiming they will eat all the fish. I leave them alone and there are oodles of turtles and plenty of fish. Funny thing though, the majority of my turtles are redear turtles (they have red blotches where their external ears would be if they had them.) Redear turtles are carnivorous when small (too small to be dangerous to many fish), are omnivorous when midsized (so still are not a big threat to many fish), and then when mature are strict vegetarians and constitute no threat to fish at all.

We have snapping turtles too but rarely see them. There are even alligator snappers but are really rarely encountered (luckily.)

Thanks for the same sex LMB idea. That sounds like a lot less effort on my part. I won't have to transport and pen any catfish. Any fish transported besides the same sex LMB will be from the upper pond to wherever.

One potential destination for a lot of the fish to be removed from the upper pond would be a BIG FISH FRY.

The LMB solution is starting to grow on me! I'll have to have a chat with my hatchery/fish supplier connection, Dunn's Fish Farm, and see what timing they recommend or if they think they have a better way. I can't imagine a better way but I'm no expert which is obvious.

Too bad you are so far away there in NW Missouri, you would most certainly be the honored guest at the fish fry and THE DESIGNATED FISHER OUTER of the LMB after they did their deed.

Pat

[Cali_Bassman]

Pat
I have a LMB in an aquaium with an Oscar, the bass won't eat the oscar food....

[Pat]

The bass may not eat the oscar food but eventually may eat the oscar for food! [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

Seriously, thanks for confirming the LMB as probably being strictly carnivorous.

My catfish as well as the x-fish have stopped coming to the surface to eat the pelletized floating catfish food, most likely doe to lowered water temps. So... do I wait till they are active again in the spring to take action, or is this cold temperature induced dormancy a good time to drain the upper most pond to eliminate future overflow contamination problems? I sold my nice semi-dry dive suit so I am not interesting in getting into the pond till it warms up. I could drain the pond way down and maybe use my canoe and a dip net to get most of the fish out and then finish draining to wipe out the hard to catch or use rotenone.

Pat

[kellenw]

Pat,

That's it, I'm packing right now! hehe

You do bring up some very valid concerns with my approach (it's definately not perfect). First off, LMB relish small cannel catfish. The long slender bodies make for a tasty meal for LMB. Like you mentioned, you will need to stock large CC (if you chose to stock additional fish) while the LMB are present. Otherwise, you'd just be providing some very expensive fish food for them. Larger stockers can get painfully expensive. I've got an idea for this later on in this post though.

Second, your FHM population would indeed be wiped out before the LMB did their jobs with the x-fish. Of course, fatheads are quite cheap to replenish after/if the LMB are removed.

Third, since you mentioned the source of the x-fish contamination comes from a nearby upstream pond, like you implied, the LMB will more than likely never be "done" with their job. I completely missed that this pond was in such close proximity (my fault.... doh! I thought it was from a rare flood event). So, I agree with your idea of draining the upstream pond and ridding yourself of the x-fish source as the only "ultimate" and surefire solution (sounds like work though... I'd rather be fishing... hehe). Now comes my idea for self-stocking extra large CC with minimal cost. Perhaps the current catfish pond could be managed for trophy CC only, and you could use your pond upstream as the rearing pond. Then, you would be perfectly fine using the "Bass Method" to contol the x-fish, and you would have a lunker pond that you could control biomass quite easily in by simply harvesting lunkers as needed (or as hungry) and adding new extra large stockers from your rearing pond as needed. You could grow some MONSTERS with this approach, combined with feeding of course. Plus, you would NOW have the benefit of the LMB keeping the "little guys" from competing with your lunkers. WOW! That would make for a fun pond to fish!

Actually, LMB can be pellet trained quite easily. Indeed, many hatcheries now supply pellet trained LMB stockers (if you ever want to take on a fun project, buy some of them and cage raise them for a year or two and you'll have some amazing fish with unreal weight ratio). I imagine if the bass get hungry enough in your pond, they'll resort to eating pellets as a supplement. They will instinctively go for live forage first though, so you need not worry about them choosing pellet over x-fish. An interesting addition here, in a recent Pond Boss Magazine article (GREAT magazine by the way), they discussed a very interesting death of a LMB. It had the typical huge head and small body conformation you see with forage deprived bass. However, the pond it came from was forage rich, and the other bass in the pond were thriving and had exellent weight ratios. Upon performing a fish "autopsy", it was discovered that PLASTIC BAITS were the culprit. It had so many of them in its stomach that there was almost no room for food! Aparently, this bass had a particular attraction to them. Interestingly, this is becoming a bigger and bigger concern. In fact, while this is the first time I had ever heard of such a thing, upon further research, I discovered that many fisheries management folks believe plastic baits are a potential danger to predator fish populations in impoundments that receive a lot of fishing pressure (lots of people just throw a plastic bait into the water once it's been torn up to a certain point). Strange fact. Anyway, just thought I'd throw that in to the carnivore/omnivore/pellet portion of the discussion.

Turtles... I've never understood why people shoot pond turtles. They are actually a very important part of the pond ecosystem. They generally do far more good than bad in a pond. I've got a lot of red ear sliders and painted turtles in my pond, and I enjoy them. Haven't seen any snappers yet, but I'm quite sure they're in there. As long as they don't bother me, I won't bother them. hehe

Do I smell a fish fry? Yum! :-)