I am having a box of anderson golden shiner fish fry delivered to the airport in the morning at eight. I was told to try and release the fry into an area that is about two feet deep. I can do that part. Release the fry into an area that doesn't have a lot of predator activity. No can do. The bass in my pond are in the prespawn phase and are staging all around the shore in about two feet of water. Any ideas on how to keep all of the fry from being eaten by bass before they have a chance to grow up and spawn? I have some of the spawning matt material left that I bought or maybe try and put them in some brush. Any Ideas would be appreciated!

With your predator situation, I would try and put them right into some kind of cover. I might even sink a few new christmas tress to give them some tight cover even if the trees were put in a few feet of water.

It's going to be brutality.

Any chance for a blocking net, James?

I could go to the store and by one on the way to the farm after picking up the fish.

Could you get the net before you get the fish or will the store not be open?

Turn them loose in the middle of the lake. No predators in open water of your lake...except those pesky, cool hybrid stripers and they aren't the least bit interested in a fish smaller than the head of a pin.

Forget about the blocking net. These fish are so small they can swim through any net you might find in any store.

JHAP, the next time i give you gams....PLEASE LISTEN TO MR. LUSK

I too am going to try out the shiner fry from anderson. please keep me informed on how your fish progress. delivery is the first of May for me.

One box is going into a wetland with no predators, the others are going into ponds with fish in them.

I wonder if you had enough shallow water if you could use stilt fence as a blocking net. I bought some the other day to fence off an area to keep waves off of transplanted vegetation, and it looked small enough it might work.

Guys, so you will know...when you get a box of fry (which I think is a cool new idea for fisheries management, by the way), each box you receive will have 250,000 fry that are measured volumetrically. They are slightly smaller than the head of a pin. When you look at the water, it looks cloudy. Unless you have a fence or net with a mesh size similar to ladies pantyhose, forget about a blocking net. Put them somewhere in your pond where they can live at least part of one day, have plenty of plankton to eat and their odds of survival to day two are good. Then, if they have enough to eat, they'll make day two. By the time they grow to 1/2 to 3/4", they are big enough to be eaten by bluegill and small bass...and that's what happens to them. It's still an extremely economical thing to do. I can't wait to track some of your ponds over the next few years to figure out the actual impact. It's an exciting "outside the box" idea (forgive the pun).

If your going to have a minnow fry,wont the bones get stuck in your teeth?

Oh lordy, death, destruction, carnage, senseless murder, mayhem, unstoppable predation.

I'm....

I'm....

I'm having flashbacks.

Do not read this thread!

Shame, so much shame.


So let me get this straight, All I had to do was to wear a pair of ladies panty hose and set the little guys loose in deep water? I could have done that. Do they like the kind with the seam up the back? Color preference? Control top?

If they are that small, why not just release them anywhere?

JHAP,does this mean your going tp come to the convention in bright pink,control top,seamed pantyhose and conduct a minnow release program?
I think DIED would be forever gratefulfor the gambush if you did

If you are going to wear that let me know....I will have to change my outfit.....

Tom, don't be ridiculous.






Bob hasn't said what the color should be yet.

"Gambush"

Will do FMB. I'll have my people contact your people.

Dave,
If you release them near shore, bugs eat them, so do small bluegill and three day old bass. Heck, one dragonfly nymph can eat two or three hundred in short order. Those semi-tiny predators don't live in deep water. They live near the shore. Keep in mind, these golden shiner fry are tiny, tiny. 250,000 may only weigh 8 pounds, total. But, if they can live as long as 45 days, they can grow to 6 pounds per 1,000...about the size of a regular crappie minnow.

Thanks for the info, Bob. I figured they were small, but I never guessed they'd be THAT small.

For the price, it sounds like an good way to spice things up.

Bob, Being that they are that small. Would it be wise to put the fry in a holding tank (ie: water trough) grow them out for the 45 days than place them in your pond? I can see some new experiments coming!

Tim, if you were to do something like that I think you would have to have pond water circulating through the tank(like cecil's perch hatching setup).

I think that it would be hard to maintain enough food in a closed system for the fry to survive to the point that they could eat pelleted food.

I wouldn't put them in a holding tank at all. They need food, lots of it. They will double their weight every few hours if they have lots of food for the first few days. In a confined area, they run out of food too fast. They will do much better in a pond. Remember this...when a baby fish is first hatched, the only nutrition they have is the yolk of their egg sac. Once that's absorbed, they have no body fat, so they must eat every few minutes or they will starve. That food is gleaned from the water. Baby shiners eat plankton and fine particles of food. They won't get that in a trough.

Thank you Bob I did what you said to do which is different than what the guy from the minnow farm reccomended. He reccomended putting them all in two feet of water away from any predator activity. They were cool looking about the size of mosquito larvae with two bulging eyes trying to swim around. How can anyone know if this was successful? It seems to me that anyone that is just starting a new pond without predators should consider this idea.

I have a new pond and that sounds like a great idea. Economical anyway if they live. What is the danger though of turning them lose in a new pond that may not have planktn for them to eat? We are expecting 80's temps this week. Hope that will help a plankton bloom maybe for fry to feed if I turned them lose in May?

The guy at anderson fish farm told me that they fertilize their ponds in order to have enough food for the minnows to eat.

Thanks James.

UPDATE TIME!

Just stocked 4 boxes of golden shiner fry for a client.
I picked up the fry at FedEx in Peoria at 9 am and traveled to the ponds. Every single one of the 1,000,000 fry were alive when we got them to the ponds. Here are some pics:





Here is a pic of one of the new 10 acre ponds. It still has to come up about 4 feet. It is going to be a Hybrid Pond - Hybrid Striped Bass, Hybrid Bluegill, Hybrid Crappie, and white catfish.

Did you count them first?

I wonder if broadcasting a bag of cornmeal in the area might increase their odds?

Has anyone ever tried this with the HSB fry from Keo Fish Farm? 1 & 1/2 years ago they were $150 to ship and cost 1 cent each with an estimated 25% survival rate up to 1 inch. Their 1" fingerlings were .17 cents each...I'm still contemplating getting 1000 1" fish or 20,000 fry for my new empty pond...but worry about the odds of survival and predators upstream washing in. If I ended up with too many, I would deal with that when the time comes.

I didnt count them, but did have a chance to see them going into the pond. Just being able to see the fish makes a huge difference!

Just put in a box of these this week as well. Wow. Lots of little fish.

One day in and I can say that in my little .2ac pond this probably won't work out too well. Although I put them in various places around the pond, including in a wetland, I'm not sure many of those little guys are going to make it.

I have however found a wonderful way to make lots of YOY bg and freshly hatched other fish very very happy. Watching some of that carnage was just too sad. If you have a good crop of small BG, they're going to go to town on these guys. My pond is just too small to put them in the middle of it and have that work very well.

I'll also say that the week old baby bass I have swimming around loved them as well. That's another post all together - as I wasn't really planning on having bass recruitment. If I was to do this next year I'd do it really early in the year. I also think this would be great for first stockings....

nothing is for everyone or every situation, but please do let me know in about a week or two if you still see any of them little guys. I hear they grow really fast.

shiner fry update!
They are doing Awesome!! I have reserved quite a few boxes of them for myself and some clients for next year and hear they are going pretty fast.

AaronM, do you have SMB recruitment?