I'm learning everything I can about bass management lakes in hopes that our "club pond" will start producing some larger bass. I have no control what others at the camps on the lake do, however. Since the 1 mile long lake is private, our club has our own regs. The bass regs are 10"- -12" take home however many you feel is enough for you.
12+" - -16" is the slot, and take only 1 home over 16" I don't think we have many bass fisherman fish in the summer, but winter, we can clean house, and I'm hoping our members are abiding to the regulations.
We've done 2 catch and kill tournaments per year for 5.5 years, and we'll have another this September. Rules- 8 bass from 10"-12", largest weight wins. Winners usually hover around 4.5-5 lbs. Sometimes it hard to even get a 10" bass ! Throw in some 12.5"-14"ers and it can become tough to get a limit. Then we do a fish fry afterwards. We've taken out over 350+ bass. This program along with the start of stocking Golden Pond Shiner fry 2 years ago to help the forage should start working, soon ? We haven't seen any increase in size of bass caught. This past Tournament was the first time we even saw a Pond shiner inside of a bass we filleted, we actually found 2 different ones. Next step is to start stocking larger pond shiners and try to get a good population with these, also.
I feel we're on the right path, just may take longer than we think. Thoughts ?