RandRules

Sorry, did not post pic earlier, must be format

Rates are available upon request. Please send inquiries to 318fishingtrips@gmail.com.

That is so awesome. Wish my school would have had a fishing team. Best of luck to your son in competition.

Good luck on the pond. You can raise some hammers in a 2 acre pond if managed correctly. Did you stock it with F1s or pure Florida strain? Also, did you have a well established bream population before stocking it? You need that.

In ours, I keep every bass under about 2.5 lbs. You need to, maybe not this early though in your case, because they’ll eat all of whatever forage is in the pond and get stunted if you don’t. Regarding forage, stocking threadfin shad was the best thing we ever did for the pond. It did wonders for the bass and crappie. They all looked like footballs. Not sure how many threadfin are left after all these freezes but i did catch about 30 in a cast net under lights a couple years ago.

Don’t plant trees around your pond unless you feel like digging them out fairly often. Being only two acres, you may need an aerator for the summer.

Last thing, if the fishing is good, be careful about inviting people to fish it. In my experience if its that good, people will ask to go almost every weekend and when you inevitably have to reneg on the invite, they aren’t all that thankful they got to go in the first place.

This opportunity will only be available for a limited amount of time and a limited number of trips. Once i get the money I need for kids’ tuition increases, I won’t offer this any more.

For sure. Its like shooting fish in a barrel. One of the ponds is very large though so i guess you could call it a lake. I know this: my success fishing there is not representative of my angling proficiency.

My apologies for this. I understand advertising is frowned upon. Even though it doesn’t look this way, i meant it to be a sort of feeler for interest from the OB community. I am new to this so I also posted it to get opinions and recs from y’all on how to set up something like this. Its a pretty unique opportunity and if someone else had posted it, I would find it more intriguing than aggravating. I know it is irrelevant, but the only reason I’m having to do this is because of significant tuition increases at my childrens’ schools (in BR so public is not an option).

Big thanks to everyone for not reporting this and thank you to the mods for keeping it up. I am not going to post this anywhere else and this thread will be the only one i ever make on this subject.

To further your point, the worst thing you can do in a private lake or pond is not harvest any fish. I have seen countless awesome private ponds and lakes ruined because of overpopulation and stunted growth. Most of the time, it is directly due to the ignorance of management regarding harvest.

In my ponds, all crappie and bass under 2 lbs are getting fileted. In about 45 acres of total water, I’d guess I keep around 1500 lbs of fish a year. I’ve been doing it the same way for almost 40 years now, and every year the fishing is unbelievable. Matter of fact, the best fishing is the year following the biggest harvests.

That considered, I’m really not sure rod & reel anglers have any effect at all on the fish populations in a lake, regardless of lake’s creel limits. I think it has more to do with nature, which impacts the success of the spawn and available cover. This is most apparent in crappie, and your success in having a good population is 100% hit or miss, as it seems to be dependent on the weather during spawn. I know this from summer/fall inventories on fingerlings using a cast net. Some years are booms, most years are busts.

The holding capacity of a body of water is finite. I think if anything, all this catch and release has only accomplished making the fish you have smarter.

Lake Larto/saline complex used to be a world class destination for crappie fishing. I know it fell off years ago. I hear its still decent enough. Its about 2.5 hours from BR.

If I were going to go on a guided trip, i would go to Toledo Bend. I hear they got em. They also have plenty of guides. I don’t know any but I could find out who is good if you want me to.

Hahahahaha. No doubt you will get some funny looks calling them crappie in that neck of the woods

Thanks. Thats what i get for trying to sound smart

I always heard that trees (even in the absence of a dam) carry the risk of punching possible drain holes in your pond once they get fairly large and die off. Did I get bad information?
Before planting a bunch of trees, I would take into consideration the amount of upkeep that goes along with that. Trees are no doubt a nice touch to any pond, but with those trees comes a lot of detriment that will wreak havoc on your water depth, clarity, and oxygen content. On a small shallow pond, you would probably have to remove that detriment yearly via excavator to keep the pond healthy enough to support any sort of fish population.
I own some very large treeless ponds and they have been excellent for fishing every year for 25 to 40 years now. Thank God they are treeless because I have seen the problems caused by trees at many of our neighbors’ once-great large heavily wooded ponds. It is necessary to drain and redig their ponds at least once every 15 years due to detriment and the fishing related problems caused by it.
Sorry for the long post, just some things to consider.