Bass food ?

[Cal]

A friend has a nice pond with a few bass that seem to top out at about 3 lbs, which has been consistent for the last 5 yrs or so. The biomass of the pond seems relatively good but I was wondering if adding forage fish on a yearly basis might be a good way to fatten them up to a little larger size. I know that people out in the midwest when I lived there fed their farm pond bass fathead minnows.

Any suggestions on what to feed them and a good supplier in Northern CA or the central valley ?

Any information will be greatly appreciated.

[Jay]

the best long term situation would be to empty it of bass, plant fatheads and craws one year, plant hybrid bluegill a year or two later, then plant bass a couple years after that at a very low density.

planting more minnows or gills can help. same with craws. They need lots of cover for survivability. many times just planting more cover and selectively harvesting bass is all you really need to do.

in my opinion, the vast majority of bass ponds have way too many bass in them. Less bass=bigger bass.

[Ralph]

You have a closed loop system and changing the biomass is about impossible. We've tried to change the dynamics of our pond without success. You are either going to have a few big fish or a lot of little fish and the total weight of all those fish will remain the same.

The pan fish will compete for much of the same food the bass are eating, and more than likely will out compete the bass within a few seasons. Gambusia are as good a compromise as any because they exploit stuff that the bass can't normally get. If your lake freezes, threadfin shad might work - they are filter feeders that efficiently covert small macro inverts into food. A freezing lake will kill off most the shad and regulate their numbers. If it doesn't freeze they will overpopulate and become a PITA.

As Jay suggested, catch and killing your bass is necessary if you stand any chance of growing big ones.