I think perhaps the worst thing pond owners fail to do is take a good inventory of the quality and quantity of the fish in the pond in the spring. March and April, here in the Midwest, are the best to measure how the pond will do for the remainder of the year.
You should be able to catch plenty of exceedingly fat fish this time of year as the breeding class of adults are highly active. If you fail to see a large/decent body size average by April, that particular species will likely stunt that following summer. I have, in my own management, seen this to hold true. Ponds with skinny adults in the early spring will over-eat their food sources going into summer. By late summer/fall, the food source was over-pressured. Stunting will dramatically increase without action.
NOTICE: This bass is in great body quality. Very fat
NOTICE: This is what happens to fish without proper harvest.
If you happen to notice, particularly bass, adult fish with thinning/non-overweight adults in early spring you want to jump on the problem before it runs away from you (which again will happen by winter). You will need to remove fish even if they are in perfect body size, but you will have to remove far more if the fish are in poor quality. For bass, almost always harvest fish between 8 and 14 inches. Take a group of people fishing, find your stringers and buckets, get the knives sharp, and get that grease hot!
