DOUBLE THE VALUE OF YOUR HUNTING LEASE

A $300-A-Day Pond and Rehabilitating an Old Lake

Throughout the South, many private land owners use Southeastern Pond Management's system and bass-stocking program to produce ponds where an angler pays from $150 to $300 a day to catch, photograph and release bass. You easily can justify paying this, and here's why. If you hire a bass-fishing guide on most lakes and major reservoirs throughout the nation, you'll pay $150 to $300 a day to try and either catch a large number of bass or one really-big bass. Depending on the water, the weather, the wind conditions and the time of year, you may or may not have success. However, if you pay the same $150 to $300 for a day of fishing and go to a pond that Southeastern Pond Management has managed for two years or more, you can catch a large number of big bass. Depending on how long Southeastern Pond has managed the lake, you often can catch 100 bass a day and have the chance to catch a 6- to a 10-pound bass. By intensively managing a pond and stocking it with aggressively-feeding bass, these catch-and-release ponds can produce a bass-fishing trips of a lifetime.

One-hundred-fifty middle-school students from Mountain Brook Jr. High School in Mountain Brook, Alabama went to the Lakes of Leavellwood in West Greene, Alabama, this past spring. Most never had fished before. In four hours of fishing, all but three students caught bass. Most students took and released three- to 10-bass each and some of them caught more than 15 bass that weighed 2- to 4-pounds each. Later my son, John and I stood on the docks at Fantasy Island, one of the three lakes at Leavellwood, and caught and released 52 bass ranging from 2 to 4 pounds in 4 hours.

At these types of commercial catch-and-release bass ponds, you'll often see anglers catching 50 to 100 bass a day. You also can provide this same type of fishing in a farm pond located on or near your hunting lease. You can have the pond ready to fish by late summer or this upcoming fall, before the lease holds its annual workday. Although pond management is a good idea to get more value on your hunting lease, all ponds are not alike. Quality pond management, like land management, recognizes the differences in each pond and the various management tactics required to make that pond productive. Southeastern Pond Management can survey your pond, recommend how to lay it out, determine where and what kind of fish habitat you need and stock the pond with adult fish as well as juvenile fish. Then you can start catching bass and bream quickly.

How to Rehabilitate An Old Lake: In the past, if you had an old lake on your property, possibly stocked with bass and bream many years ago, you only could rehabilitate the lake by draining it. Then you had to take out all the fish and start all over again. Now, with the new management techniques Southeastern Pond Management has developed, you may not have to drain your lake. By setting up feeders and stocking the lake with F1 hybrids and feed-trained northern bass, you can start fishing and catching bass out of your pre-existing pond within a week or two after the Southeastern Pond Management truck leaves your lake, instead of having to wait a year or two to fish. You also won't have the expense of draining the lake, taking the fish out and waiting for young fish to grow up.

For more information on Southeastern Pond Management, visit the Web site at www.sepond.com or contact one of their three locations at:

Birmingham Alabama Office
(888) 830-POND (7663)
2469 Highway 31
Calera, AL 35040
Phone: (205) 664-5596
Email: pondexpert@aol.com

Opelika Alabama Office
2985 U.S. Highway 280 E
Opelika, AL 36801
Phone: (334) 749-0559
Email: sepond-opelika@aol.com

Jackson Mississippi Office
291 Highway 51, Suite E6
Ridgeland, MS 39157
Phone: (601) 853-0680
Email: kirkspm@aol.com

TOMORROW: WHY USE POND MANAGEMENT