Building Lake Corona

[dodge man]

It’s been that dry here in western Illinois. We could sure use the rain too.

 

[jk96]

This little guy showed up for a drink today. Finally put a trail camera on the pond a couple days ago. So far a lot of deer, a few coons, and a couple of coyotes.

 

[ponytug]

Pond looks nice, too!
All the best, Peter

 

[BnRidge]

Would like to do bluegill and bass.

We originally did bluegills and some fathead minnows to feed them, 1983. They did ok, then they grew large, then slowly became overpopulated, and were mostly small. Introduced bass fingerlings, 1998. Bass grew fast, very fast, ate every last bluegill, every single one, became very large, then over time they too became overpopulated and small. Now there are only bass, mostly 10-12" or so. 1ac pond 12ft deep, not spring fed.

 

[dieselscout80]

We originally did bluegills and some fathead minnows to feed them, 1983. They did ok, then they grew large, then slowly became overpopulated, and were mostly small. Introduced bass fingerlings, 1998. Bass grew fast, very fast, ate every last bluegill, every single one, became very large, then over time they too became overpopulated and small. Now there are only bass, mostly 10-12" or so. 1ac pond 12ft deep, not spring fed.

I’d bet you have some bluegills left as some of them will get bigger than a bass can eat in a pond that small.

We have a rain fed 1 acre pond like yours that doesn’t have a outflow.

In 2010 we started with 500 bluegills and 250 shellcrackers. Then a year later we got 25 large mouth bass.

Now we still have bluegill and shellcrackers. The bass we catch though are mostly 10” to 12”.

However, I’m sure there are some bigger bass but they are picky about what they eat.

I read a article about growing big bluegills and they stated that you want lots of small skinny bass so the bluegills will grow big.

 

[EddieWalker]

The size of the bass is determined by the size of it's food. If you have too many bass, the bluegill will not live long enough to grow bigger. The pond becomes stunted. The bass continue to reproduce, along with the bluegill, but none of them will grow to any size. One pound bass is about the limit when there are too many bass in a pond.

Rule of thumb is 100 total pounds of predator fish for every surface acre of water. Most people don't fish their ponds hard enough to keep the bass population down. I'm guilty of this. You need to remove every bass you catch. Catch and release if fine for public lakes, but in a private pond, you have to Catch and Remove!!!!

 

[BackRoad]

It's starting to look quite peaceful and inviting Mr. JK...