Got to do some bass fishing last week.

Caught a bunch one pounders.
Over 3 dozen easily.
Too many at that size in my opinion.
Caught them on a whopper plopper and weightless 12 inch berkley power worms.
My brother came and was throwing a 7 inch worm and caught a dozen of roughly the same size quickly.
Lots of bull frogs out at night.
Turtles everywhere!


The tilapia are back to grazing in the shallows.

You would see big violent strikes going off in the shallows with the fish (making a wake) moving fast over shallow water vegetation back into to deeper water.
Had to bigger bass feeding in the shallows IMOP.

Lost a good size bass on a 7" soft paddle tail.
It took off running for the deep and spit out the hook.
(May need to try braid instead of mono as a main line)



My concern is that the bass have to get through a lot of vegetation to target bigger forage.
Probably overstocked on bass and turtles as well.

I have 2 ponds that have similar issues.
My plan with the small bass is to cull about one hundred 10-14 inchers out of each pond. That works out to about 10lbs per acre for these ponds. I was culling them at a lower rate for several years and have seen improvement, but have gotten lazy the last couple of years and it doesn't take long for the ponds to get back to overcrowded.
Both ponds are overloaded with Eurasian Watermilfoil, and the bass have a hard time getting to the forage fish, which are mostly bluegill. I'm thinking about using a chemical like Sonar to cut back some of that and making a small fountain for aeration with a 1 1/2 hp water pump I have handy.
Fertilizing and grass carp are also options presented to me for weed control, but from what I understand, grass carp will eat milfoil as a last resort, and the water clarity in my ponds is at least 10 ft,, and the cost of enough fertilizer to keep a continuous bloom in that water would be prohibitive.
Good luck with your pond management and try not to get too attached to the fish you raise, they become almost like pets after a while!