9-7-8-in.-may-4

Comment

Comment by Walt Foreman on May 5, 2012 at 8:35am

I think what happened in the lake where not many have been caught is that they got munched.  We stocked 3-4" in that lake, and it has a lot of largemouth over five pounds in it, and, specifically, there has been a rise in the number of five-pound-and-up largemouth caught in the three years since we stocked those coppernose, so I think most of them went down gullets.

Comment by Walt Foreman on May 5, 2012 at 8:33am

Just to clarify on the coppernose pond count - there are a couple bigger lakes that I manage that have coppernose in them, one that's had them for over ten years and in which they're doing well, and the other in which we just stocked them three years ago and made the mistake of not stocking them right next to feeders, and not many of them have been caught so I'm going to be stocking a couple hundred 6-8" in that lake the first week in June.  I'm also going to be transplanting 50-100 bigger coppernose to another large lake I manage, probably one day next week.  And there's a guy with a nine-acre lake who wants to buy a couple hundred larger ones from me as well.  So I'll be stocking larger coppernose in several ponds and lakes over the next month.

Comment by Walt Foreman on May 5, 2012 at 8:28am

I presently only have coppernose in three ponds, and one of those is a client's, so only two ponds that I can fish whenever; one of those two ponds is a half-acre pond that I stocked several hundred (probably 800-1,000) fingerlings in last May, intentionally crowding them a little because I wanted to make sure they went on pellets right away because I wanted to grow them out to stock in other ponds.  The other pond is the one I caught the big coppernose from about a month ago.  I did catch 40 or so 5-7" coppernose from the grow-out pond on Thursday, and transplanted them to the pond that got mostly cleaned out by a poacher or otter; they probably averaged 6" and were very fat.

 

I probably won't fish the other coppernose pond again this year, definitely not more than once, because I don't want to harrass those fish any more than necessary.  I expect that within eighteen months, possibly within twelve, that two-pounders should start showing up in that pond, but I don't want to slow down that process by gut-hooking some of them, and don't want to make them hook-shy...

Comment by Tony Livingston on May 5, 2012 at 5:09am

Nice fish Walt... Are you catching any Coppernose?