10.25 nov 4

Comment

Comment by Walt Foreman on November 6, 2012 at 4:03pm

A few months ago someone - can't even remember who - told me that some teenagers had been sneaking at night into an adjacent property that also has some of the chain of phosphate pits that these are a part of; then just a couple weeks ago, the great-nephew of the owner of this pond told me that he knows of some teenagers who have been sneaking into some ponds in the area at night.  So I'm ninety percent certain it's poachers.

Bass and muskie wouldn't be able to eat several hundred 9-11" bluegill in two weeks.  It happened within a very short timeframe.

Comment by Leo Nguyen on November 6, 2012 at 12:55pm

Wow. That's a heck of a predation pond you got running. Have you manage to track down the two muskies?

It could be the sudden offset of predation by the bass and muskie just to feed wildly, or, like you said, a poacher. But to remove that many BGs within a small period without being spotted is a bit bizarre, unless the pond is completely away from normal view, and the poaching was done under the total darkness of the night. But wouldn't BGs and bass both get effected at the same rate?

Comment by Walt Foreman on November 6, 2012 at 12:46pm

Leo, when I first started working with this pond three years ago, it was badly overpopulated with bluegill - the average size was 3", and there were no bass or other predators left in the pond.  I stocked bass at least four different times over the next two years - stocked fifty fingerlings initially but few survived due to bluegill predation, then stocked thirty or forty one- to three-pound feed-trained bass, then stocked fifty 6-8 tiger bass, then fifty feed-trained 8-10".

And, in December of 2009, I stocked two 12-14" tiger muskie into this one-acre pond.  The bluegill were still on the high-density side, though there were getting to be hundreds in the 9-11" range, as of last summer; they were still packed in there this February, and would feed voraciously even in February.  One weekend in February they were still dense in there, feeding heavily when the feeder went off, and then two weeks later it was clear something had removed most of the bluegill from the pond (I would guess a poacher, though I did find a couple dead ones so it's possible there was a kill).  

We caught six or seven bass Sunday - three times as many bass as bluegill.  So the pond is finally in good shape predator-wise.

Comment by Leo Nguyen on November 6, 2012 at 11:08am

Wow. Does this pond has predation species to keep them in check?

Comment by Walt Foreman on November 6, 2012 at 9:52am

I'm with you when you say last few bites.  I know Tony and Jim have been able to catch bluegill all through the winter even when there's no ice, but I've never done well in the winter months on bluegill.  Other species, yes; bluegill, not so much.  I usually put my rods up about this time of year and take them back out around mid-February when we start getting a few sixty-degree days in a row.

Comment by Jeffrey D. Abney on November 6, 2012 at 9:44am

Understand Walt and thanks...I guessed the weather may have been a factor during these back and forth times .....We're guarding the last few coppernose bites with vigor here in Northeast N.C., as another winter style storm is getting ready to pass through.....

Comment by Walt Foreman on November 6, 2012 at 9:37am

Thanks, Jeffrey!  We had a cold front move through the night before; it was in the high seventies the day before, but only got up to about sixty the day we fished.  And this particular pond is the one that had the depletion event of unknown origin (probably poachers) back in March, so there's a really low density of fish in it - several other of my bluegill ponds still have fish feeding really well on pellets, but the feeder went off while we were at this pond and we didn't see one fish come up to a pellet.  I think there's so much natural food due to the low density that they just feed when they feel like it, and don't when they don't.

Comment by Jeffrey D. Abney on November 6, 2012 at 4:00am

Nice fish Walt.....what contributed to the slow bite in your opinion?