Overrun with sunfish

A friend of mine with a nice private pond that i fish, stocked it with fish from a commercial fishery. It has what appears to me to be Hybrid sunfish which are quite large after only a few years, but the Large mouth bass which came from the same source are not really getting large at all. This pond is thick with baby sunfish at the edges, which can be easily netted in abundance. My question is, could the, what seems to me, poor growth of the bass be caused by the over abundance of these sunfish. Im thinkin since they are so abundant and so large they are out competing the bass for food. Is there a feasable correction for this, as he would like the bass to get to nice size as well??

Edited by Fish4Fun, 23 March 2009 - 07:43 AM.

A friend of mine with a nice private pond that i fish, stocked it with fish from a commercial fishery. It has what appears to me to be Hybrid sunfish which are quite large after only a few years, but the Large mouth bass which came from the same source are not really getting large at all. This pond is thick with baby sunfish at the edges, which can be easily netted in abundance. My question is, could the, what seems to me, poor growth of the bass be caused by the over abundance of these sunfish. Im thinkin since they are so abundant and so large they are out competing the bass for food. Is there a feasable correction for this, as he would like the bass to get to nice size as well??

It's really hard to make a judgement over the Internet as there could be several factors at play such as overharvest of bass or as you say some kind of subsequent detrimental effect on the bass by the bluegills such as raiding the nests of the bass. But if the bluegills truly are hybrids I'm surprised they could be that abundant as typically when planted they are up to 90 percent males. Somewhere down the line I'll bet the bass were or are overharvested and they are having a hard time in recruitment due to the nest raiding. If that truly is the case getting your hands on advanced size bass in the 12 to 14 inch range would help or if you can only get smaller feed trained bass put them in a floating cage for a year until they get up to that size. Been there done that. a floating cage is easy to built and if you have a pier and feed supplier you are good to go.

You should try the pond website I PM'd you and get their take on it.

Edited by az9, 23 March 2009 - 11:20 AM.

Thanks so much for your input, im aware of that site, just thought id try here first as i feel much more comfortable with the answers i get here, Yours included

I always thought that to have a good bass pond you needed a good sunfish population for the bass to eat (juvies, that is).

I think there is a very fine line between sun fish population, bass population.

if you have to many sunfish i hypothesize that when they spawn the sunfish fry can almost wipe out the food chain from the bottom up, plus they probably out compete the baby bass in numbers.

I am affiliated with a group that has a 7acre pond in south west Mississippi, Traditionally we have had great success with bluegill in the pond but little or no success with bass.

3 years ago we started to keep every single bluegill we caught (regardless of size) and throwing back all bass. and increasing food out put to 150 lbs per week (3 feeders @ 50 lbs per week)

at the time it was not unusual to catch upward of 30-40 bluegill in an afternoon, the majority were slightly smaller than hand size (with possibly 10 or so very large individuals), also there were few minnows evident in the water, few mosquito fish, top minnows, etc

now we catch less fish overall (20-25) but the majority are larger than hand size. The bass population seems to be increasing, also minnows are evident around the banks of the pond.

we are scheduled to have a pond management company come and check out the pond in the next month or so (we get piggy backed on when they are doing larger jobs, its cheaper) and i am interested in what they have to say.


my advise is to catch as many sunfish as you can, keep them all.

I think there is a very fine line between sun fish population, bass population.

Absolutely. We try and tell a pond owner they need to decide what their goals are: big sunfish or big bass. Typically you can't have your cake and eat it too in a pond although it is possible with intensive management. I would suspect the above pond has some large bass in it but with the abundant bluegills they may be tough to catch.

Typically a large sunfish pond has either predominantly hybrids to keep numbers down or lots of small to intermediate size bass to keep numbers down. Or you can think out of the box like I do. I plant only feed trained male bluegills and female yellow perch in a pond to produce the largest specimens possible and reproduce my fish in other ponds. The male bluegills grow the largest of the two sexes as do the female yellow perch.

I always thought that to have a good bass pond you needed a good sunfish population for the bass to eat (juvies, that is).

Me too, my first thought was when i went there to get some YOY sunfish that somthing was wrong. I could catch 10-15 per scoop at the banks edge, of course i only kept 3-4, next i used a hook and line and was catching BIG ones as big as the pic above, which i also didnt want, but only rarely catching a bass over 6 inches. I asked my friend how he stocked and he said all the stock came at the same time and same numbers all fingerlings. Now im blown away, because im thinkin with this many baby sunfish these bass should be huge, anyway, thanks for the great answers.

A friend of mine with a nice private pond that i fish, stocked it with fish from a commercial fishery. It has what appears to me to be Hybrid sunfish which are quite large after only a few years, but the Large mouth bass which came from the same source are not really getting large at all. This pond is thick with baby sunfish at the edges, which can be easily netted in abundance. My question is, could the, what seems to me, poor growth of the bass be caused by the over abundance of these sunfish. Im thinkin since they are so abundant and so large they are out competing the bass for food. Is there a feasable correction for this, as he would like the bass to get to nice size as well??

You may also want to do a water test
does this pond have green water (bloom cycle) in the warmer months?
most farm ponds can get better returns in fish pounds caught, by a good dose of phosphorous.
phosphorous will be the middle set of numbers in the fertilizer set 13-38-0.
A balanced PREDATOR (bass) TO PREY (sunfish) RATIO is the key to a healthy fish population.


read this link on .

http://theurbanranch...uatic/0904a.pdf

You may also want to do a water test
does this pond have green water (bloom cycle) in the warmer months?
most farm ponds can get better returns in fish pounds caught, by a good dose of phosphorous.
phosphorous will be the middle set of numbers in the fertilizer set 13-38-0.
A balanced PREDATOR (bass) TO PREY (sunfish) RATIO is the key to a healthy fish population.


read this link on .

http://theurbanranch...uatic/0904a.pdf

you may have to build some extra large minnow traps and remove most of the bluegill from the pond.
your garden will love you for this.

you may have to build some extra large minnow traps and remove most of the bluegill from the pond.
your garden will love you for this.

fish4fun, here is another very good site for info.

http://ohioseagrant....hp?topic=1137.0

Thanks for all the excellent info and links, I have no intention of trying to become a pond problem expert, but as i move from segment to segment of this hobby, i begin to question more in my mind, why some things in nature occur. while i used to just think simply... wow theres lots of big sunfish in this pond, thats cool , now i know where to get big sunfish. Now...This situation seems more to be a problem to me, and why is it like this. Im hopeing this is a healthy reaction after being involved with knowlegeable people for a change, and however maybe misdirected, is a good thing