Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations How are your Yellow Perch holding up?

For those of you with yellow perch are you seeing any morts? I've seen two in the last two weeks. I believe the majority are hanging in there though, as I dropped a sinker to the bottom today to check depth and something kept grabbing it near the bottom. I'll bet it was perch.

Sure glad I don't live 100 miles south of me or more (I'm about 20 miles south of the Michigan line.) There's a real difference in air temps that far south. 99 F. the other day 100 miles south of me, when it was in the low 80's hear. Today it's pushing 90 F. here.

We haven't lost any yet but I did notice a dramatic decrease in feeding activity over the last week to 10 days.

We're in the lower part of the thumb so a bit further north than you but we had about 2 weeks str8 of 90 + degree weather and our little part of the state hasn't had any rain in the last 6 weeks.

I can't believe they appear to be holding up .. 4 more weeks and I think we'll be over the hump.

No morts yet but I have slowed and cut my feeding back to every other day due to sluggish uptake of the pellets. I am aerating 24/7 but the fish are feeding slow and it is damn hot. I'm running an excavator on a job now that the heater is stuck on, not the fan motor thankfully but the the hot coolant to the heater under the seat is on all the time. The seat and the rest of the cab is quite warm, at 90 outside it feels like 110 inside, I know how my poor fish feel. My water is down about 16 inches from full pool.

Joe,

Are you sure you can't run your aeration only at night to keep heating of the water down?

I don't areate - this is the 1st year I've had perch YoY. They are in schools - about 20-40 each and about 1-2" long right now. I probably have about 40 "adults" - haven't seen any morts - water is getting lower though, most of the shore grasses are high and dry now - not as many places for the young YP and BG and FHM to hide now!

Cecil I thought about that too, but my fish aren't quite as large as yours at the moment and the pump is helping with the FA at least in part of the pond. I'm going to add a second station for next year to see if I can all but slow it to a crawl. Just a really tough year as far as water levels and heat. We are getting weekly rains at least, moderating the night time temps some, my future plans also may include floating shade.

I had a 5 inch floater this morning in my holding pond where I have mostly female bluegills and male yellow perch. However I allowed the perch to spawn (added about 10 females) in this pond and moved eggs to a production pond. Apparently I didn't move all the eggs.

I removed every egg stand I could see too this spring. Must have missed one as well as I am seeing fry from this year, but no where near 5 Inchers, are you feeding food small enough for them to eat? I may have to try to fish a little to see how large of a YOY I can get a hold of, interesting.

Even when you move all you can there are still always one or more egg strands laying on your bottom weeds in deeper water. I've seen it with my own eyes when I had gin clear water before I added the Aquashade.

This particular pond I am not feeding the perch although I started to feed 5D01 to bg's around the edges that hatched in June.

I think this fish that got to 5 inches is one of a small ground of hatches hence the larger size.

My biggest .62 acre pond had dropped to 82. F. from top to bottom this morning. I keep the diffusers going well into late morning (vs. just dusk to dawn) as air temps didn't top out into the 70's until then.

It's supposed to drop into the 50's tonight. I'm considering cranking up a Kasco surface aerator tonight to see how much cooling it does with those temps.

Update:

After a night of temps in the 50's the big pond has dropped 1.8 degrees from top to bottom with the diffusers running all night. The pond now is 80.1 F. I'll feel better once the pond temps drop below 80 F. (for the health of the yellow perch). Even better at 77 F. the optimum temp for growth for yellow perch!

My smaller holding pond is now just under 80 F. from top to bottom.

Apparently I have enough mixing going on to have the same temps from top to bottom!

Cecil - I haven't seen any problems with heat stress in any of our fish. Even though our water temperatures in upper water layers have been in the low eighties, the bottom temps remain in the low seventies.

You have probably answered this question before, but wouldn't it be better to aerate the top half of you pond(s)in order to keep some colder water near the bottom?

Dwight,

The problem with that is, with my fertile pond, if I do that I run out of D.O. in the deepest cooler water, and the fish have to come up into the warmest water. It's a Catch 22. I also have a very high density of smallmouth bass in the pond that need plenty of oxygen. They can handle the warmer temps fine but they need ample amounts of oxygen.

I used to run the trout pond overflow into this pond and the pond never got above 80 on the surface, if even that warm. Unfortunately I stopped running the well for trout as I'm not raising them right now.

Update:

Temps have come down another two degrees in both ponds that have yellow perch. Smallest pond is the coolest (less water to cool) at 78 F. Bigger pond is holding at about 80.0 from top to bottom.