I have a 3 acre pond with largemouth bass and crappie and perch. We use to catch bass between 3 and 8 often, but in the past 3 years we have been catching a bunch of small bass and big crappie. Does anybody know that if we remove several small bass will catch big bass again.

yes!!!!!

sounds like you have too many ,lots of competition for eeod,i,d remove some too.

sorry for spelling,food:

I would try and put a dent in the crappie and sunfish. The large ones compete for same food and will eat bass fry. They are also prolific reproducers. Also big crappie and sunfish are no longer a food source for most of your bass. If you feel that the pond is overpopulated with bass, then thinning them out would be an excellent idea. The more a fish species population outgrows its contained environment the more they become the same size. I believe "stunted" sunfish populations in ponds are from overpopulation.

Crappie can overtake a 3 acre pond pretty easily, IMO.

skeeter,


Go to the forum pondboss.com.. there is a wealth of info on managing ponds, and corrective stratagies on fish populations.


There are some great people over there.


You will likely have to harvest a TON of crappie and then do a slot limit on bass, but it is vary hard to keep crappie in a small pond controlled, they breed early, and then compete with bass for the smaller baitfish.