I live on a golf course with a 2 acre lake. I am the only person who fishes it and the bass top out at 5 to 6 pounds. Is there any way i can alter the lake (i.e. stocking shad, crawdads, more bluegill) or change structure in order to get more growth? I appreciate the advice

If you don't own it, it's not yours to alter.

sorry i didnt mention i was oked by the groundskeeper

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As soon as you get the bass growing bigger....you won't be the only person fishing it. 8-)

I don't know about stocking  a small lake with shad, but if you have a decent bluegill population, you can easily set up a feeding station or two and keep it full of feed. It will automatically trigger at whatever time you set it to and the bluegill will converge on it at that time every day like pirhana!!  

we are happy about 5-6 lb bass here :'(

we are happy about 5-6 lb bass here :'(

No kidding....definitely a problem I could live with

I've seen stocking and harvesting questions on here before. I would like to stress it's not that as easy as tossing in some prey or setting up a food station.  Playing with a pond is much like the time travel movies---when you mess with one thing, it effects everything else.  I would suggest you consult a biologist or a wildlife officer to point you in the right direction.  

If you add bluegill and feed them regularly, you could end up with a pond full of them, with a stunted bass population.  Don't forget the more fish you add, the more oxygen is depleted and in small ponds this is effected a lot easier than in a big body of water.  Don't forget also, that all of those bluegills take the eggs of the bass nest too.

IMHO---pond management is not something to mess with when you don't know what you are doing.  You can do more damage than good.

You don 't go messing around with a pond just to obtain "more growth" if you don 't know anything about pond management, it 's not just come, dump some bluegills and you 'll get 10 pounders, it don 't work that way.

A pond is a miniature ecosystem and the biomass ( pounds of fish ) capacity is determined by many factors being the two most important: pond surface and ammount of dissolved oxygen content.

You can 't have more fish than the oxygen content can allow, try to break that and the fish will die, you can 't add more fish if you don 't have the surface.

Do not mess with a pond unless you have professional help from a fisheries biologist backing you.

1. I don't care WHERE you live (FishChris...execption), i think i can speak for all of us on the board by saying that catching 5-6lb. bass is something we would be content doing all day/everyday.

2. (My simple logic), As far as i'm concerned, the pond must be pretty healthy, and self-sustainable in order to allow fish to reach this 5-6lb. size. Therefore, as long as your catchin'/releasin', i don't see any reason why the fish that are presently around 5lbs, will eventually grow to be the larger fish you are wanting.

Just My .02

thanks everyone, im takin it all into consideration and contacting a proffesional. didnt realize that it was so complex