Extension Outdoors: Know your pond goal and objectives
STARKVILLE, Miss. (PRESS RELEASE) – Sources from an MSU Press Release say that a serious pond manager will know their pond goal and have specific objectives to achieve it.
A goal can be defined as a long-term statement of what you want the pond to become, while objectives are more specific and can be measured to determine if you are making progress towards the goal. Being measurable is key; this tells you if what you’re doing is working or if you need to change course.
Your goal must be realistic. Keep in mind that a single pond can’t provide the best fishing for all species. For example, producing trophy bass means giving up larger bluegill because bass need plenty of smaller prey they can catch and eat. On the other hand, if you want trophy bluegill, you need fewer bluegill so there can be more food per fish. To get this, you want to have plenty of small bass that eat most small bluegill.
Consider this goal: To create a trophy bluegill fishery. This goal may be possible to achieve, but is the habitat appropriate to grow trophy bluegill? You will need to fix habitat issues before going all in on trophy bluegill.
Assuming the pond habitat is appropriate, consider this potential objective: To produce large bluegill that provide a sustainable harvest. This is not very measurable. How is “large” defined? How will you know when you succeed?
How about this objective: To produce a sustainable harvest of 8-inch bluegill with 20% of catch exceeding 10 inches within 4 years? This is better. You might include a measure of annual weight of bluegill to be harvested, but for the typical pond owner, it is adequate. If you keep good records of your fishing activity, it would be easy to determine if you are meeting this objective.
Or you can get serious. Consider the following: Annually harvest 100 pounds per acre of 8- to 10-inch bluegill to reduce abundance of mid-size fish; promote a size structure with 20% of the bluegill population catch exceeding 10 inches as a catch-and-release fishery; and scale up feeding of at least 40% protein feed from 5 pounds to 15 pounds per acre per day over a 2-year period to achieve bluegill 10 inches or larger with a condition factor exceeding 115%.
This might be too much for the average pond owner, but if you are intensively managing to produce trophy bluegill, it might be appropriate.
It is important to keep in mind that your objectives (and sometimes even your goal) may change over time. Fish management is a circular process. You plan, implement and assess the response. Maybe you succeed and like where you are, but that doesn’t mean you can relax. The actions necessary to achieve your goal may not be the same as what is needed to maintain your goal.
On the other hand, maybe you were not successful. You cannot simply do the same thing and expect different results. Some changes to your management actions will be necessary, and the objectives may need to be reconsidered. In rare cases, new information may require adjusting the goal itself. You’ll need to be adaptable.
