A friend approached me at work last night asking me if I'd net some shad to place in a private pond he has. He described the bass as having large head's and very small bodies. Obviously starving. Told him I would but it will be a bit as I have a minor surgury thursday, few day's of recovery, kid's graduation ect. I see this as temporary and not sure if it will fatten up the bass enough to make a good fishing pond without a reliable food source. My question's are:

Is it legal to transport shad from public to private water?

Will bass take another food source such as dog food to feed on? Or stricktly live predation?

Hate to see a group of good sportfish starve to death.

Yes its legal to transport shad from public to private waters. I have heard that bass will eat pellets, but have no experience with that. Placing threadfins in his pond will help, but it sounds like your friend has too many fish in his pond. I'd couple the shad introduction with removal of as many 13" and less stunted bass as you can catch.

stunted fish. remove all the ones like fouzman says. pump some crawfish and perch into that pond. shad most likely wont live. if you are close enough to FATE(rockwall) you can come over and we can pull a ton of craws out of our fishless pond. pond to pond transfer wont matter.

+1 on the crawfish and bream. If he's overstocked/underfed which it sounds like he certainly is, removing bass first will make your forage introductions go much further. Bream should be the basis of any forage base, are easy to come by and easy to transport. Threadfins not so much.

SkeeterRonnie, can I come get a ton of those crawfish to put in my "pond" (60qt pot)

Great suggestions from everybody about how to help fix this problem.

We stocked our pond with shad caught from lake Tawakoni. Used a 55gal. trash can to transport them in. Ran one of those cigarette lighter air compressors to the can for air while in transport. Maybe a 20 minute drive. Shad did great.

sounds like those bass would be easy to catch!

i have thought about it as well... but seeing them dump the green stuff into the water to make the pond "pretty" changed my mind about eating them

You can buy carnivorous fish food for bass.

great thread lot's of good stuff
main things remove smaller bass and add lots of baitfish
i've never had many shad survive transport

Bluegill and lots of them. And remove as many bass as you can, the bluegill do 2 things, Bass will eat them and bluegill will eat the hell out of the bass fry. I fished a private pond last month and pulled out 100 bass under 17 inches at the request of the land owner, in 6 hours. This guy probably needed 500-600 more pulled out of a 40 acre lake. They were not stunted yet but if he doesn't get on it they will get that way.

Used to have access to a 7 acre pond. When we first fished it we could catch 60-70 12-14" fish a trip. We started keeping a lot of fish to eat. Within 3 years I got a 6lb bass. 3 years later I had 2 9's out of it and probably caught 100 over 5lbs. In less than 6 years we went from catching the 60-70 to about 15-25 per trip. But almost always caught one over 5.

Bottom line, take some fish out and add some kind of bream or shad.

How big is the lake? Second don't waste your time getting shad. A bass has to eat 10#s of forage to grow 1#. You could put tons of shad in that lake and you wouldn't even notice a weight gain. You need to harvest a lot. The key is to harvest everything under the size that the bass are stunted at. So if they are stunted at 14" take out everything under 14" even if you see a school of fingerlings TAKE THEM OUT. Once the bass population is getting under control then look at restocking forage fish. If you don't you will waste a lot of money and time. Feed trained bass will eat pellets, but I doubt the bass in that pond will take to them. The bluegill will eat pellets and its a good way to help the bluegill population. If you must buy something to put in the pond to supplement the forage try goldfish, they are cheap, slow simmers and brightly colored. The bass will eat them like crazy. Make sure you get the trout line sized ones, they are big enough for the larger bass to eat. That's just a start

Another thing that most people will not do is Kill the pond and restart. It can be a lot cheaper in the long run. If the pond is stocked right you can have 2# bass in a year. I've seen a few ponds that have 3# bass in a year down on the boarder. I've even seen one pond that after 3 years has 10# bass. Has long as you have good genetics in the pond you can get it back in to shape with harvesting bass. The other inputs like supplemental forage (goldfish, tilapia) and fish feeders will speed up the recovery process.