Hi y'all, 

 

I'm moving to a property in the Southeast with two existing ponds that we are going to start managing. The larger is roughly 3 acres and the smaller is roughly 1. My plan is to get the larger one turned into a trophy bass pond, stocked with Florida largemouths, with forage including bluegill, redear, threadfin shad, shiners, fatheads, and crawfish, along with natural things like frogs, snakes, etc. The smaller one I'd like to try my hand with trophy sunfish in, so 2+ lb redear and bluegill. This means it will be loaded with 1-2 lb bass, and some 4-6 lb hybrid striped bass, most likely. Good fun on ultralight tackle for sure. 

The goal in the trophy bass pond is to manage it to the point where we can get several 8 lb fish in there, and hopefully produce at least a 13 lb fish over the years. 

 

The conditions in the larger pond are stained water, with about 3 feet of visibility. The bottom is a sandy soil mixture and there is some debris on it (leaves, etc). We've got cypress trees, and some plant growth around those but other than that it's pretty deep and not a ton of plants. Away from the edges it slopes to 8-12 feet deep or so, and around a lot of the edges you can't see the bottom, roughly 4 feet deep - but there are some shallower spots. There's also a dock in about 4 feet of water (which does fluctuate based on water level, but supposedly stays close to 4 feet most of the time). In the middle areas of the pond, there are holes that reach probably 15-20 feet deep - these have some rock on the bottom of them. There are trees sunken in the pond at various depths for structure. Overall, really good pond with a lot of nice structure in it. There are spots to fish from the bank and there are some spots that won't be accessible except from the water because there are trees around the edges. Those spots have shade and some branches and stuff that have fallen into the water. 

 

Now, here's what I'm trying to do. I haven't fished for bass in years, so I'm a bit rusty on what to use and put together. I want to put together a few setups that I can keep rigged up on a kayak and launch in the larger pond to catch some bass in the conditions described above. I'd also like these to work from the dock and the bank, if I ever feel like fishing from those. We will have a variety of bass sizes in this pond, and I'm confident there will be bass over 8 lbs in here in the next few years (the biggest that has come out of here right now is 7 lbs).

 

How would you fill a 3600/3700 tray box, as well as packs of soft plastics on the side, for this pond? I would like the lure selection process on the water to be simple, so I can spend more time fishing and less time playing with tackle. My only requirement is that I have a few hollow body frogs in there, because they are my favorite bait to throw. 

 

Looking forward to recommendatoins, tight lines

 

My best pond baits are spinnerbaits, square billed cranks, jigs and a plethora of plastics rigged weedless on 3/0 or 4/0 EWG hooks.  Plastics include creatures and worms for bottom contact; flukes and buzz toads for topwater duty.  Generally, ponds I fish have a distinct weedline that forms a mat on the surface 10 to 20 feet out from shore.  It makes it easy to visually target the weedline.  Outside of the line gets the cranks and spinnerbaits, and inside/on the mat gets the plastic offerings.