I suspect many avid pondmeisters who read Bassresource may also be avid hunters. And although some are probably hunting to fill the freezer, many are likely enticed by the opportunity to grow and harvest trophy bucks. Big ol' bruiser bucks. You probably dream about them like you dream about 15-pound bass. I know I do.
It turns out that a pondmeister with aspirations of trophy bass can learn a lot from the deer people. My day job is as an Extension Professor of Fisheries, which means I work with landowners to achieve their pond objectives. I have a counterpart on the wildlife side who does the same from a wildlife perspective. I am the fish guy, and he is the deer guy.
On rare occasion, my wildlife counterpart and I conduct workshops together. I almost know his presentation by heart - not because I have seen him present many times - but because it is very similar to the presentation I give.
It goes something like this. Three factors go into growing a big buck. First is age. Antlers get bigger as deer get older. Most bucks are near their peak antler mass around 6-7 years of age. After that, their teeth begin to wear out and tend to decline.
Next is genetics. Some bucks just are preprogrammed to grow bigger antlers than others. Just like people come in all shapes and sizes, so do deer. There is some opportunity to cull individual deer with less potential, but you need to be good at aging deer on the hoof. Otherwise, you may accidentally cull a young deer that may be big for its age, suggesting trophy potential a few years down the line.
Lastly, there is nutrition. If you want big antlers, you must provide the calories, vitamins, and minerals necessary to grow them. This means managing food abundance, food quality, and the herd size that is eating that food. Harvesting females is a big part of that because having too many will reduce the food available to bucks.
Doesn't that sound familiar?
It should, those three factors are just as important to growing trophy bass. However, there is one more factor to consider when dealing with fish. Growing season. Fish are poikilotherms, which is just a fancy term for cold-blooded. This means outside temperatures control their metabolism, and their growing season depends on water temperature.
Bass grow very slowly when water temperature is cold, but growth rates increase quickly as temperatures warm up in the spring. Growth tops out at about 81 degrees. With the onset of a hot summer, water temperature continues to rise. In the upper 80s, the growth rate slows because the fish start to experience thermal stress. Water temps in the 90s result in negative growth; the bass lose weight. And if temps exceed 100, death will occur. Some ponds see death in the upper 80s.
So, all this means is that the amount of time fish are at or near optimum growing temperature is important... ergo, growing season.
A bass in North Dakota doesn't get too stressed by hot temperatures but doesn't approach optimum temperatures long enough to get to 15 pounds. Likewise, a bass in southern Florida has many optimum days but enough stressful days when it is too hot. Big bass come from southern Florida, but not world record class fish.
There is a Goldilocks zone where conditions are best for growing the BIGGEST fish, and this seems to be between 28- and 32 degrees North latitude. The world record bass came from southern Georgia and is within this range. Interstate Highway 10 across the Deep South is an excellent central marker for this "ideal" region. Sure, California and Japan do not fit this model, but their climates are ocean-regulated and warmer than their latitude suggests.
Of course, this is a moot discussion. The pondmeister cannot do much to manage the growing season. Your pond is where it is and isn't going anywhere. So, let's talk about age.
Trophy bass are older bass, just like deer. However, fish don't have a peak harvest age because they grow infinitely, given their environment, climate, and food chain. The growth rate slows as fish age, but fish never truly stop growing under ideal conditions. But then again, many bass anglers don't harvest trophy bass, so they often can continue to get larger to be caught again. But this is a slippery slope for the angler. It is easy to think that because older is better, you should release every bass so that it can grow.
This is a big no-no.
So, is culling a good idea like with deer? One difference between deer management and fish management is that experienced deer hunters can often identify or age individual animals on the hoof. We can't do that very easily while fishing. Bass grow at different rates, but you can't tell fast growers from slow growers when you catch one. Thus, it is not feasible to follow individual animals to see which one is not living up to its potential.
Fish culling based on growth potential is based on more than just on current size. If a fish is larger and fat, we give it time to grow more. If a fish is short and skinny, it needs too much energy to get fat before it grows so that we can take it out.
However, if you are skilled enough to tell the sex of a bass (male versus female), then you have an excellent place to start. Male bass have zero trophy potential. Remember that. You will never catch a male bass over 5-6 pounds. That's right; every trophy bass is a lady. So, the selective harvest of male bass increases the ratio of females to males, increasing the trophy potential of the population.
Okay, so we need to remove some small bass but let the ones with potential keep growing. What about genetics? To some degree, genetics controls potential, as we have discussed in previous articles. But once you select a genetic strain, there's not too much more you can do to manage for genetics other than culling small, skinny fish and all the dudes.
Lastly, we have nutrition.
I always tell clients the way to trophy bass is through their stomachs! One of the best ways to have a smorgasbord to grow big fish is to limit the number of mouths at the table.
A pond, just like a section of deer woods, has a natural carrying capacity. Fish populations will increase to meet that capacity. For instance, a given pond can support 100 pounds of bass. If you never keep a fish, you'll have lots of bass. Maybe there's 100 one-pound bass or maybe 50 two-pound bass. However, removing enough fish can push this population to 20 five-pound bass or 10 ten-pound bass. In any of these scenarios, your pond only supports 100 pounds of bass.
Of course, you can also increase a pond's carrying capacity, just like deer managers work on the deer woods. But don't plant food plots or conduct controlled burns. Fertilization is one of the best ways to increase food production in a pond. A well-designed and executed fertilization program can take a pond that supports 100 pounds of bass and make it support 200 or maybe even 300 pounds of bass. Likewise, alternative prey might help, like stocking shad or tilapia.
However, if you don't harvest enough bass, the population will quickly expand, and then you'll have 300 1-pound bass. You can fertilize, feed, and stock new prey, and it is all for naught without keeping the population of little bass in check. You must take out lots of small eating machines to leave prey for just a few bigger ones. If prey is unlimited, growth can be rapid; but harvest is critical for making prey unlimited.
Wow, it seems that largemouth bass are just cold-blooded deer. Well, sort of.
Dr. Wes Neal, Extension Professor at Mississippi State, serves as State Extension Fisheries Specialist and is passionate about educating the public on small lake and pond management. He is an avid researcher on farm pond management and sport fish genetics. Wes is the lead editor of Small Impoundment Management in North America, the only textbook on the subject. He loves to hunt and fish, wes.neal@msstate.edu.
Reprinted with permission from Pond Boss Magazine
