I've been chucking all kinds of things to the PS's in the little backyard pond, Crickets,grasshoppers,fly's,spiders,and tiny toads, and they gobbled them up, tonight I threw in Japanese beetles and they spit them out, I guess they don't like oriental food.

Insert drum hit here-

I take great offense to this post!!!! I not ONLY love oriental food, I spit the Pumpkin Seeds I was eating like it was nose coffee. Darn near choked to death!!!

I remember being a kid and using Japanese beetles to catch rock bass out of the creek by our hunting cabin. I think in the summer when the water is so darn low and the food supply is about dried up, even Japanese beetles are appetizing.

Brown trout will smack little cork flies painted like Japanese beetles in the summer in a couple of the trout streams I fish. I guess you're right AP, your PS just don't like Oriental food...

With all those hand outs, those PS putting any size on them?

The 2 largest PS's are getting near 5", still no spawning yet, but with warmer weather predicted maybe soon.
The 2 GSH never eat off the surface, only stuff falling or on the bottom.

That one on the far right must be a male. I think the one in the middle is too. The one on the left is a female. They look great...

The middle and right one are the biggest,with a total of 6 PS's.
The middle one has been guarding his nest below him for atleast 5 or 6 weeks.

I hung a japanese beetle trap off the end of the dock with a hole at the bottom of the catch bag so they would fall through and hit the water. The first day I watched it the bluegill spit out the first few beetles. Later in the week they were eating them real well and not spitting them out. The last few day the beetles have been all over the trap and the fish are hammering them. I watched them eat at least a hundred the last few days. In fact tonight it was cool out and I plucked about 25 of them off the tall grass by the pond and tossed them in and every one got eaten. It may take them time to aquire a taste. The first time I took a sip of Dads beer as a kid I didn't like it. Now it is a different story.

Good point DJT, maybe I'll keep putting in beetles to see if they acquire the taste.

Somewhere in the distant past, someone posted an exceptionally functional beetle trap made to rest on the water-half a 5gallon water bottle, resting on an innertube, with a beetle trap suspended on the opening.....it was in a thread from several years ago, which I cannot locate now.

Here it is Yolk.
http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthread...=true#Post18641

The PS's are still giving the beetles the cold shoulder, I'll keep trying.

That's it, thanks AP.

Maybe starve them a bit AP, then getting then eating beetles and you can then go back to feeding them other stuff...

That would probably work CJ, but I just wanted to see what things they would eat. I'm cheap but I can spare a couple bucks for fish food.

Darn and here I was thinking we finally found something Japanese beetles were good for!

DJT wrote "The first time I took a sip of Dads beer as a kid I didn't like it. Now it is a different story."

Same story as with Theo except with a different ending. He never 'got it.'

Yes he did. His momma dipped his paci in DD.

One day years ago I was BG fishing, and ran out of bait. Instead of walking 100 feet over to the worm can, I skewered a big carpenter ant crawling near me. I caught BG after BG on those carpenter ants. I was thinking they fell out of the trees occasionally, and the BG learned to like them.

That's Binky, cretin.