Our family owns a 4 acre pond in north central Louisiana which has an average depth of about 6 feet. It is approximately 8 years old and was originally stocked with fathead minnows, bream, florida bass, and channel catfish. Since then some crappie have found there way in and we have added threadfin shad for forage. We fertilize every spring and harvest all the bream and catfish we can while trying to manage the bass.

We are unsure of our bass management strategies and successes. One thing we chose to do was mark and count the bass we caught to get a feel for the numbers and sizes. From March 2007 through October 2007 we have caught 82 bass with 34 being caught at least a second time. During this time we have caught five fish over 5 pounds, 12 fish between 2-5 pounds with the remainder being smaller. I feel conficent we have a good food chain and wonder if our fish just aren't hungry enough to catch more quality fish.

My main question is how many bass per acre should our pond hold?

If you have any other management suggestions I would love to hear them.

Welcome aboard!

Here is a topic section from our "Fishing Articles" that might be of interest:

http://bassresource.com/fish_biology/about.html#fish