They overcrowd and stunt out. I believe the Alabama strain can get bigger but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will

We had some technical problems yesterday. Probably because of that

I always fry them and fried fish tastes the same to me

It takes a few years, stay the course

@@aquaticbiologist6516would you say pull more fish? On year 3, definitely getting longer and a little heavier just not fatter

@@Ryan_Baldwin are there crappie in the pond?

@@aquaticbiologist6516no crappie, 1 acre has bluegill bass and a few channel cats

@Ryan_Baldwin sounds like they were stunted for a long time. Keep pulling the skinny bass out. They are probably too old to gain weight properly. You are managing the pond so the reproduction can grow up healthy. Your adult fish are useless, I’ve seen it many times. I usually pull 20 pounds of fish per acre for 2-3 years so bumping it up sounds good to me

Salt works well. I have a video about ti

@@aquaticbiologist6516 I work with all fish and corals.

Sure thing. Glad it helps

When you do something all the time you get a feel for it

@@aquaticbiologist6516 Okay so it is a law, and he isn't following it?

It’s not a law, it’s adding electrolytes to the water to help reduce stress. If you understand basic fish biology it’s just common sense

It’s called relative weight. Going fishing doesn’t make you a biologist

Cool guys for sure

Early spring around the spawn is usually best. Along dams with rock usually holds them well

Big trout in there. Good luck

Thanks very much

I’m not sure if they nest raid badly. All fish do when starved, bluegill are horrible nest raiders when crowded

They eat fish so they are competing for forage. Keep,it simple, bass is the only predator in ponds

You got that right!

I don’t like tagging them, it causes bacterial infections. I just keep up with the average of all the relative weights. It will be uniform across all size classes

I’ve been invited on over 30 podcasts and have a few hundred videos explaining how you have been brainwashed by television fishermen. I do this because bass can and do stop growing when crowded. You catch & release guys have ruined trophy bass fishing. Shake your head all you want, it won’t change the facts

🤣 you will be surprised how much they eat

Sure there will alone outliers. I get a lot of guys trying to grow bass in tiny ponds unsuccessfully so I made that video. Big bass can just eat everything in small ponds

Absolutely. Glad it helped

The net is coated

That’s fine but it won’t matter, crappie can wipe ponds out no matter how many you keep

That’s not how Mike fished them at all. But I have seen injured grass carp swimming in a circle swim right into a bass mouth. The bass just patterned the circle, raised up and opened its mouth and the carp swam right in. Minimal energy expenditure, bass was about 8-9 lbs

I have seen them chase a gizzard shad that's 15" long roughly... it was using our boat motor's jack plate to try and hide from the bass after that shad was separated and chased to the surface over a main river channel island that was flooded and covered by 25 feet of water in the Tennessee River when Chickamauga Reservoir was created after the dam with the same name as the Reservoir had been finished. I watched that huge bass that I think might have even been a TN new state record largemouth bass hunt down that big gizzard shad always pushing it to tire it out by tailing it just staying immediately behind & under it only being about 1 to 1.5ft below and at a tail down position, with it's head up pointing at the shad always looking upward at up to a 45° angle as it pushed & that shad towards open water and away from our boat as it shadowed the big shad's every movement. I watched it 4 different times, anywhere from actually having the shad touching our boat motor as it tried to hide, and out to 25 ft away from the boat while the bass under and behind it was always trying to get in front of the shadtobgrab it head first while it had it pushed to the surface. I could see it clearly for 3 minutes of the 5 minutes total it was trying to grab the shad by it's head, until the shad just got so tired and unaware enough to sit almost motionless with it's back almost out of water while the bass tried non-stop to gain the ideal angle of attack position that allowed her the desired head first attack from underneath surprising the tired shad with it's attack, as she finally darted upward and successful grabbed the shad by the head then quickly she turned her body back at towards the depths in a steep nose down dive angle... snapping her jaws 2 or 3 times in very quick succession, advancing that big ol' gizzard's body farther down into her gullet so her pharngeal teeth could then grasp assisting to push the gizzard down father to be digested. Very huge bass... very well rehearsed in knowing EXACTLY when to begin her attack in order to be successful, without energy unnecessarily wasted.

I appreciate that very much 👊

Think of it like a pie. The pie represents all the fish a pond can hold. Cut 1/4 of pie away, that’s about what the bass population would look like in a balanced pond. The remaining 3/4 of the pie represents the bluegill population. If you stock shad you are displacing bluegill so you would be cutting that 3/4 pie piece in half. Half for the bluegill, half now in shad. Every fish species you stock takes another hunk of pie away from the total, it doesn’t increase the size of pie. This is an easier example to see, hope that makes sense.

@@aquaticbiologist6516 wouldn't the shad and the blue gill coexist? Not really into bass myself they're fun to catch but if rather eat other fish. If I wanted a small pond without bass would sunfish do okay by themselves?

Shad filter feed plankton, 50% of a bluegill diet is zooplankton. They compete against each other, that’s why the shad displace the bluegill. Bluegill & bass coexist in ponds. Bluegill spawn often, bass eat them. Check out the Sugarhill outdoors playlist, I’m growing bass in that pond in real time showing guys how you can grow bass on bluegill only forage base. I stocked it in 2022 and there are bass 3-5 pounds now

Nice description

👍

You option doesn’t change facts. My name is Shan OGorman. Drop that into a google search and see what happens. You should start with the mossy oak gamekeeper podcast #41. Then let mossy oak know I’m not a real biologist. Watch what happens 🤣

Tournaments started catch & release because they had PR issues due to poor fish handling. Since they had the largest fishing platform for the last 40 years it’s gotten out of control and is now causing our bsss populations to stop,growing

Crappie are much better in lakes that size, the trout definitely help put weight on bigger bass. Nice observation

@@aquaticbiologist6516 Yeah overall the size in the lake is really good I catch a bunch of chunky 1.5 to 4lb bass. I caught a 7 and half lber a year or so ago and it was SKINNY though. Largest one I had out of that lake. I have been worried about the health of the lake since I caught that big one. I hope it's more of a fluke maybe an older fish idk. This year the lake has been amazing though. Nothing huge yet but they are FAT! Plenty of 3 lb fish this year which is just so much fun! I really hope to hook into one of the big ones I'm convinced they are all fat right now!

@flaminggorilla909 wouldn’t worry too much about 1 skinny fish.

That’s just forage

I found you could learn about most of this stuff from just a few classes. I was a TA for the pond management class when I was in school. Watch for pond work shops through your local extension office. They usually have good workshops that cover most everything. I’ll help you anyway I can. I have a membership page with some videos I don’t post in public that might help you that’s new so I’m working on more content there

💯

My name is Shan O’Gorman, drop that into Google. You can start watching the podcasts I have been invited to speak on and let them know I’m not an actual biologist. Start with Mossy Oak Gamekeepers, pay close attention to the part where Dudley called me a genius. then go over to the 5 times I’ve been on Tackle Talk, head on over to Alex Rudd. He will laugh you right off there. Then we have Olivier Ngy, Monsterbass Inc and aggressively average anglers. Make sure everyone knows how fake I am and how smart you are. Ok, good luck with that 👍 I like this format where I use the insults as a form of advertising for all the podcasts I’ve been invited to speak on. BTW after you get done with that I’ll make you a list of the fisheries professors and professional biologists that also follow me so you can let them know I am a fraud

​@aquaticbiologist6516 he doesn't know any better...congratulations you have what they call...a hater...someone who is not happy with what you are doing because they're not happy with what they are doing...keep going bro🎉

@@ceeron7774 thanks man. I have a lot of them actually. It’s funny to me, the more they write the more $ I make. 🤷‍♂️ doesn’t bother me

It’s always the same mistakes. I wish guys would listen but at the same time they are good for comparing/ examples so they are not repeated

Man made environments require maintenance. Fish didn’t evolve in man made ponds and failing to recognize that is doing them an extreme disservice

No. They came out of the example pond Sugarhill outdoors. We have northern & Florida in there but no spots

That makes the most sense to me as well. Thanks for commenting. For anyone reading Preston is a fisheries biologist from South Carolina and was kind enough to come on Live with me. You can find this interview under Live playlist 👍

@@aquaticbiologist6516 you’re welcome! Nice meeting you in person last week!

Don’t let these dudes shame you man. It is necessary to keep some for the health of the fishery

It’s private, I don’t manage public water

I have answered this dozens of times and have a 20 minute video dedicated to this subject. How do you think the Oscar’s and snakeheads and 15 other non native species have got there? By guys relocating fish. You are ruining bass fishing by transporting any fish including bass. You are transporting disease & parasites, you are diluting the natural genetics of bass if you move pond stocked bass to natural places like rivers. You need to conduct an extensive electrofishing survey to determine if the other body of water needs bass to be stocked and what size is necessary for stocking. And you probably didn’t even know you just admitted to committing a crime online, it’s illegal for many reasons outlined here. Add to that you are completely wasting your time and fuel doing this, about half of relocated bass don’t grow after relocating them. Even when you do the survey and determine there is plenty for them to eat. My name is Shan O’Gorman, Google my name and check out the 20 + podcasts I have been invited to speak on. Start with #41 on mossy oak gamekeepers- I think this will help you. I appreciate you asking in a respectful manner, please stop relocating fish. It’s not helping

Definitely an interesting presentation

We have an epidemic of guys who think killing bass is ruining the fishery all the while patting guys on the back for coolers full of crappie & bluegill they harvested. It makes absolutely no sense at all. Bass need to be harvested in most places because they are living in starved conditions so I figured challenging their manhood might get them to listen. Nothing else seems to work

Bluegill over 1 pound is how I define a trophy but that’s subjective. This guy has a lot of grandkids so he wants a good bluegill fishery for them to catch fish quickly and learn how to fish