How can I manage my pond so that I know if my fish are growing properly?

Are your fish growing properly? You might be thinking, “How can I manage my pond so that I know if my fish are growing properly?” Well, Bob Lusk has the answer.

From Minnesota I believe and Jeff.

Good evening fellows.

Hey.

Yeah, first of all i want to thank Bob and the pond boss that forum he has like you said it’s spot on everything about that is incredible learning. I have a pond that’s about six years-old up in Minnesota the land of 10,000 lakes, and I probably learned more from that website than I have in all of the talking i’ve done at the DNR here in Minnesota

That’s your brother right?

So i want to say thank you for that and anybody dealing with a pond has got to go. My question is this. The growth rates of the fish specifically let’s use largemouth bass for example or even bluegills in the north versus the south. There’s data in the south but not so much in the north. If you guys have any correlations to that or any recommendations on that. For me monitoring my pond whether my bass are growing properly or my bluegills are growing properly and especially I want if I want to boss it out and I want to get those 10 or 11-inch sunfish how fast can I get those?

Sir, I’ll tell you. The function of the growth rate is based first of all how much food they have and secondly how much competition there is for that food. So the fewer fish that you have the larger they’re going to get. Now one thing about largemouth bass for example, they have they have you know 120 perfect growing days every year almost everywhere in this country. So it’s not growing season it’s how much food they have in that span of time where they can actually grow. So what I would do in Minnesota is the same thing I would do in Texas or even Georgia. I would weigh and measure my fish I would sample them they call that fishing around here. I would go away and measure some fish and compare those growth rates to what standards are in other words a 12-inch bass should weigh 12 ounces right a 14-inch bass should weigh 1 pound 7 ounces a 16-inch bass should weigh two pounds and a quarter well compare your fish to those standards and see how well they’re growing if they’re not growing at a rate that is acceptable to you then you either need to thin their numbers or beef up the food chain or do both.

Right.

And that’s the way to do it

And since we’re talking about size of fish another myth I want to see if it’s true or not the age-old story of the divers in Lake Mead going down coming back up we can’t work down there the catfish are bigger than we are. True? you think? I mean can catfish get that big?

Catfish can get that big but the odds of you seeing them and them seeing you you know i think that’s pretty much an urban myth.

Okay. Got that one. I can mark that one off my list.

at the same time there’s 121 pound blue cat caught in lake Texoma and 128 pound blue cat somewhere I think in Illinois so they get pretty big.

They have both blue catfish and flathead catfish can certainly reach the 100-pound class.

They’re frighteningly big.

They can become big fishes.

That would be a big catch. Get a picture.