I was wondering if snipping a gill on a small bass works to feed bigger bass. I just started helping a friend manage her 10 acre tank, and we need to take out between 200-250 lbs of bass. I would hate for her to come to her tank and find dead bass floating everywhere when I could have moved them to different tanks.

Also, when you catch a 2 pound bass with the head of a 4 pound bass is it a candidate for removal, or should it be left?

Thanks

No idea about clipping a gill. Yes, a 4 pound head on a two pound body is an older, stunted fish. Take it out. Sounds like you need to remove 250lbs of bass as a starting point. May need a larger harvest if the lake is full of stunted fish. After that, she needs to come back in with a BUNCH of baitfish.

Thanks Fouz

Its a practice I routinely employ in my ponds. I never understood the old recommended methods of just throwing them out on the bank to go to waste. Forage is just too valuable to waste.

Do larger bass eat them? Absolutely yes. I have observed it for years. Alternate uses of the small bass include table fare (excellent) and stocking resource for other ponds. Wasting them is not a viable option on my place. I've never seen one "floating everywhere" but I also normally only sacrifice a few at a time.

Any/all bass with a relative weight less than about .8 and/or all bass less than about 13 inches are sacrificed here.

Does it work? Hard to attribute results to just this practice alone because so many other things come into play...but 6 bass over 8 pounds in this share-a-lunker season would seem to indicate that my practice isn't hurting anything.

Where is this tank located? You could get a couple TFF volunteers (like me) to come take a few coolers worth of small fish out.

I never thought about snipping the gills but I like that option. We have 13 other tanks/lakes on the ranch so I plan on transporting fish to those as well.

Yes, snipping a gill on bass 9" and smaller might be a great idea. I think bass much bigger than 10" would be very difficult for any other very large bass to eat. So, I would harvest bass bigger than 9".

Yes, remove 2 lb bass with a body of a 4 lb bass.

Unsolicited opinion. Removing 25 lbs of bass per acre on a severely stunted lake is likely not enough. When we sign up a new lake, we often remove 40lbs to 50lbs per acre . After 2 years of aggressive harvest we see weights really increase. Of course, catch rates plummet. But, it is all part of the management game. Water fertility plays ah huge part in harvest numbers. Understanding if your lake is "blooming" with zooplankton or phytoplankton is critical to the volume of harvest.

Believe it or not, gill snipping does not always work. We cull 300+ fish/year from our pond and I culled about 50 fish one weekend by snipping their gills. Went fishing 2 weeks later and caught a handful of fish with already snipped gills from 2 weeks prior. Now I whack them in the head a couple of times with heavy pliers and it dispatches them quickly.

I believe it. Mother nature can be very resilient.

Amazingly at times.....

Put a couple of dozen 5-6 lb. blue cat in the the lake and they will help manage it for you. plus stock it with blue gill and other perch.