Pond Management - For better fish growth

hi my name is steve fender i'm from fenders fish hatchery here we're based here in ohio we've been stocking ponds and lakes and managing lakes for since 1956 and what we're doing this video for here today is to help you better manage your body of water and grow big fish basically everybody stalks upon what big fish and we've done a video earlier on pawn stocking ratios and you'll want to refer back that if you're stocking a new pond to get the right ratio so you have a good balance in your pawn to begin with what we're going to talk about here is growing big bass big bluegill big catfish whatever you have in your pond whatever your goal is for your pond whether it's growing big bluegill or big cats or bass we're going to educate you on that so you know how to do this primarily the first thing you want to do is you want to have a good balance of fish i have customers come in with all kinds of ideas things you want to do some good some bad uh if i have a customer come in and let's put in bass only i always try to inform you need to have a forage fish you have predators you have forage you have to have both of them together or you don't have a good balance when you stock your pond with bass and bluegill what you're doing is your bass is your main predator bluegill's your main forge fish bluegill will also act as a control fish too as in they eat a lot of bass eggs and a lot of bass fry keeping the bass from becoming overpopulated and at the same time they reproduce and make them feed for the bass now bluegill makes such a good forage because they spawn all summer long not necessarily the same one but different sizes of bluegill spawn all summer making feed all year long for all your different varieties of fish whether it's cats bass perch even the other bluegill now the way you want to enhance the growth of the overall body of water general good management and stocking properly will grow nice fish you want to go to the next level start feeding with pellets we sell a pellet and you can buy it at your local feed stores and like that keep in mind when you buy fish feed you want to buy a pellet that's small enough that they can eat it comfortably and you're going to focus mostly on the bluegill as far as you're feeding anyhow so you're going to get a pellets about eighth inch in size that floats and also find the highest protein you can get 40 50 percent protein somewhere in that in that area is what you want to shoot for if you buy a 20 or 25 percent protein you'll find out the bluegill just don't eat it as well they're not going to grow as fast they won't like it you just won't have the same results so keep in mind 8 inch pellet and something in about that 40 to 40 to 45 even 50 range if you can find it that will grow big bluegill when you grow big bluegill big bluegill obviously make more eggs making more feed for your bass when the eggs hatch out and make fry also what happens when you're feeding a bluegill they're not stealing bass eggs and they're not eating that eating the bass right so now your bass population gets larger so now you're going to have more big bass big bluegill the whole nine yards so by feeding the pellets is a very really big big benefit now we have some customers that go directly to the bass with feed and that what i'm meaning is they buy feeder minutes fat head minutes we sell a feeder mineral here figure menu that's about inch to inch and a half in size adults are two inches that's as big as you're going to get a feeder minnow or a fat head miner to get so you're not going to ever establish them in your pond because of the fact that you know two incher is eventually going to get all eaten up but when you put the minnows in they spawn as long as they're in there they're going to spawn four or five times throughout the whole summer making feed continuously and if you have a lot of brush a lot of structure hiding places for them that's also going to give the the fat head minutes a chance to survive long enough to reproduce several times you'll want to stock minnows every spring every fall even through the summer whenever you can and the more you put in the more the bass have to eat the faster you're going to grow the bigger they're going to get now the downside to all this when you're pushing all this food into the pond what you're going to find out is your fishing's going to be a little bit tough fish bite for two reasons they're either hungry or you aggravate them until they hit on a bait when you get to feeding the bluegill and the bass aggressively like this with pellets and minnows you're going to find out that you've taken that one element away now you're going to have to become a better fisherman beings they've got all they want to eat they're going to be harder to catch they're going to be more choosy about what they they bite on but that's a sign of a good pond when i have customers call me and tell me they can't catch their fish that typically it's because they have a very well-balanced pond the thing is doing very good so that's something you want to keep in mind you're going to have a little tougher time catching fish so you just have to become a better fisherman but stock with minnows is a real plus a little bit of rule of thumb if you're starting if you're feeding with pellets aggressively you can feed four to five bags of feed per summer that's 50 pound bags that's aggressive if you feed two to three bags you're still going to make a big difference it's going to help i've seen customers feed five and six bags per surface acre of water that kind of gives you a little bit of roll for them which you're going to get into as far as feeding now as far as men of stocking i have customers dump anywhere from a thousand to ten thousand in per acre it just depends on how aggressive you want to be on growing your fish a thousand per surface acre of minnows twice a year will definitely make a difference you're dumping more food into the bottom end of the pond by doing this you're going to find out that everything in that pond will feed on the minnows your bass your bluegill perch crappie anything you have in there is going to feed on minnows very well so you're going to help everything grow by following these guidelines i can guarantee you will not have stunted fish as long as there's food there they eat they grow they can't be stunted so yes this is all common sense approach to raising nice fish in your pond the other thing is like i said earlier keep plenty of brush and cover in your pond so you have plenty of areas to hide and you're going to have more survival on your little on your little minnows the other thing that helps is you have a better survival rate on your bass your bluegill perch and crappie and stuff like that too so that helps too catfish will also eat on pellets if you get the feeding catfish on pellets they won't compete against the bass so feeding the catfish they get lazy they eat off the pellets they leave all your other fish alone so here again now you're making more fish in your pond so you're getting more big fish out of your pond so you know it gives you a chance to raise big bass for trophy fishing or this you just you want to take more fish out to eat whenever you boost that it's like fertilizer in your garden the more fertilizer you put to it the more these your plants are going to grow the more minnows you put to your fish or fish feed the bigger your fish are going to grow my customers that do these kind of practices have really really good success and grow big fish the other thing you want to keep in mind when you're boosting these numbers like that you want to make sure you either have aeration of some kind of the bottom aeration or surface aeration and also make sure you have or if you have water flow running in whether you have a spring fresh water runoff whatever you want to make sure that your oxygen levels don't get too low if you're in an area where you have hard winters like we do if you have a large concentration of fish because you've feeding them all season your likelihood of fish kill is a lot greater because there's more fish use more oxygen so that like i'm saying you need to have some sort of variation if you don't have a spring if you have a really good spring that could take care of that also but just make sure you don't have a winter kill watch things out that way a little bit the other thing is your perch and crappie typically they won't feed on pellets if you can sometimes get perch to feed on pellets it's not very common but uh the perch and crop will also feed on the minnows very well so that's going to make more feed for them too so then if you want to stock walleye stock and walleye you know you put minnows in whenever you put minnows in you just basically change the dynamics of the whole pond you can do more of what you want to do for this pond you go to our website at www.fendersfishhattree.com you'll find our product on our product page you'll find my book i wrote a book here several years ago that basically takes takes you through the steps of raising fish pond management weed control just anything pond related it's all in that book so if you go to our website check that out you may want to get a copy of that to help you raise your fish you

Channel: Fender's Fish Hatchery

Views: 193,348

Keywords: pond, ponds, fenders fish hatchery, fish, bluegill, bass, catfish, forage fish, predator fish, fish growth, fishing, ohio, southern ohio, northern ohio, baltic, baltic ohio, steve fender

Id: 6YMiy7LUln8

Length: 8min 46sec (526 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 11 2015