Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Northern pike, muskellunge, tiger muskellunge

Which of the three is a better predator for controlling fish populations in ponds and small lakes?

I'll take a first shot, Gambusia. All three of these are predators that like big prey -- often 33-40% of body length is quoted as desirable size for prey (a 24-inch pike would love to eat 8-10 inch yellow perch, and that's not an especially big pike). Thus, if you are in the panfish management business, you don't want too many of these big predators. They'll crop down the panfish from the top, taking the same size panfish as anglers. Now, if you are trying to manage for large sizes of largemouth bass, then some of this big predators can help keep down the overall abundance of bass by cropping the small ones (6-12 inches, perhaps), maintaining growth rates and keeping up the size structure of bass remaining in the pond. In the "old" days, we said keep them out of ponds. Carefully used, such as tiger muskellunge which are almost sterile, or one sex of pike or musky, they can have a place for truly interested pondmeisters!

How about chain pickerel? Pretty much the same fish as the above fish in many ways, however it rarely gets longer than 2 feet but averages about 14". 33-40% of 14" is about 4" to 5" often the size most sunfish stunt at. They also are much more adaptable than musky and pike, especially in more southern bodies of water...

Some guys hate them and think they overly compete with bass. I have never seen a pond where they become overly abundant. They will cut your line with their teeth, but I think they are a blast to catch!

It depends on the goal. If you are trying to control small lepomis/sunfish you don't need any of those biger toothy predators as they will soon outgrow the forage. Plus a few female LMB may be a better option. If you are attempting to control 8 inch LMB then CP is to small but the big guys will help as Dave notes. What is it you want to accomplish ?

Several times while fishing the creek behind our hunting cabin, I have tossed back a RBS or GSF in the 4"-5" range only to watch it begin to swim off(the water is very clear) and to then watch a large chain pickerel inhale the sunfish. They may prefer creek chubs, white suckers, stocked trout and other fusiform fish, but they will also prey quite readily on sunfish IMO.

CJBS -- you certainly are correct. While the "soft-rayed before spiny-rayed" and "fusiform before compressed" axioms are generally true, it still all comes down to availability and vulnerability. Predators eat what is there, what is abundant, and what they can most easily catch.

For those of you in the Pond Boss Family Talk, I really, truly meant to type "rule of thumb" rather than "axiom." Darn professors, anyway.

Besides, this has really been a help to my total post number....

Any of those are apparently safer than "seat-of-the-pants".

The Stick asked a few more questions about northern pike and prey. “In your post on the about NP, Musky, or Tiger Musky, you wrote: "They'll crop down the panfish from the top, taking the same size panfish as anglers."

I did not know this, I thought in Dwight's pond they just cruised around and sucked in a variety of the abundant small fish. Is this an energy spent to size of meal deal? Why do big NP go for a 2.5" minnow when ice fishing? Is that because the minnow is pinned down and can't get away, or is it a curiosity kills the cat situation.

Don't the bigger size prey they prefer scramble to cover when a NP comes cruising around?”


I replied to him: First, as you pointed out with the minnow and ice fishing, vulernability is still one key to fish predation. We did monthly food habits of pike over at Lake Thompson, SD, and I remember one month where they had no fish prey, and actually mostly ate leeches!

Then, I immediately wanted to start talking about a graph of data. I posted such a graph below, showing the length of prey fish eaten by northern pike of various sizes. This information came from Pelican Lake in Nebraska, during 2001.

The “upper edge” of the relationship between predator length and prey length is probably established by gape size. Small fish can only take small prey. Big fish can take big prey, but also can take small prey. Now, here is the key. I don't want people to think that pike food habits fall only along that upper line. In reality, what we see in our field studies is a wedge (the wedge fills in below that line). Predators eat what is abundant and vulnerable. YEP = yellow perch, BLG = bluegill, LMB = largemouth bass, NOP = northern pike, GSH = golden shiner, COC = common carp.

One obvious thing to me on this graph would be the question: why aren't the pike eating bigger yellow perch, as you said? The answer is that there are very, very few adult perch in that lake. The lake has a 28 inch maximum length length limit (all fish 28 inches or longer must immediately be released) on northern pike, primarily intended to manage common carp through pike predation on them in this National Wildlife Refuge lake (i.e., waterfowl management is top priority). The pike literally have eaten the perch from the top down, and we'll spend a week trying to capture 30 or 40 adult perch. There are still enough to reproduce, as you can see by the small perch eaten by the pike.

Good information, thanks Dave...