Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Chain Pickerel

Was wondering what you guy think about these guys, thinking of digging my pond out ALOT bigger in the spring and making it a pickerel, perch, GSH, FHM pond.

I don't know much about "picks" from a management or culinary perspective. From a fishermans pov they're great!, VERY aggressive, bite year round, great fun to catch on light tackle!( don't forget a short leader)

Yeah i catch them commonly in a huge pond in my woods yet the pond is only 2ft deep!!!!

Seny -- I'd sure love to get an electrofishing/trap net sample from such a pond combination about 5 years after you started it. We just don't have any scientific documentation of a combination like that in our professional fisheries literature. I wonder if we could talk Mark Cornwell at SUNY-Cobleskill into doing a sample down the road. He's always got a crop of interested students. You're just a "tad bit" too far from South Dakota.

Hmmmmm...5 yrs.... a pond full of nothing but Chain Pickeral??!!...always stressed....always nervously looking over their shoulder wondering if they're the next meal....can't sleep...can't concentrate.....can't even focus on spawning duties ...wracked with that typical Pickeral guilt.."well if I don't eat these fry someone else will OH MY!!"

Pick are fun to catch for sure. I like how they will follow your bait to the boat too! That's always a hoot!

no, it would have perch, FHM, and GSH also, and the reason being, two of my favorite fish to eat and catch, other than walleyes which are my favorite to eat

Hey Seny you're crackin me up! I thought I was the only one that enjoyed a good mess of fried Fathead Minnows(FHM) and Golden Shiners(GSH)YUM:}

Given the smaller maximum size of chain pickerel compared to northern pike, I would be interested to see what effect they would have on the yellow perch. Northern pike will crop down the perch from the top -- they want the same ones that anglers want. However, perhaps the chain pickerel would concentrate on small and medium perch, resulting in some big adult perch?? I don't know. Just askin'.

Hey Dave,

Your average Pickerel can get to be about 18 inches long. Large one get up to 24 or so if I am not mistaken. A 20 inch Pick can eat a pretty darn nice size Perch I bet. If you did have any left over they wold be Very nice Perch in deed!

I think a Perch-Pickerel pond would be an interesting experiment, if you could stock male only Pickerel then you could control them better to manage the Perch, don't know how hard it is to sex them.
Maybe another bonus to male only pickerel is they don't grow as large or as fast as the females and this could cut down on the taking of larger perch.

How 'easy' do chain pickerel spawn in ponds? Very rarely do we ever see northern pike spawning in small ponds in NW OH. It is my understanding that shallow weedy marshy areas are required for successful pike spawning. Has anyone observed results of pike spawning in small ponds?. Are chain pickerel more tolerant of warm water compared to NP? Does Zetts in Drifting PA still sell chain pickerel?

RC - you are right. A 24 inch northern pike likes to eat 33-40% of it's body length (unless it's a deep bodied fish like a bluegill). Anyway, that would mean 8-10 inch perch probably still vulnerable to pickerel, and survivors would be big, wouldn't they? SD folks like yellow perch, and they commonly produce 10-12 inch yellow perch in something like a 3-acre pond with a high density of largemouth bass.

Heres a Pickerel I caught 25 yrs ago in S. Ga. I wasn't "stiff arming" for this photo so I'm guessing it was in the 20" range. We used to catch lots of them this size accidentally while bass fishing. During the 5-6 yrs we fished this pond they were always there and never seemed to get much bigger than this. The pond was over 100 acres but only about 30% was fishable the rest was covered by thick cypress stands like you see in the background. I guess the point is that they are a top line predator and need shallow weedy cover to thrive.

Dang it maybe I need to stock theses things!! I got plenty of weeds thats for dang sure!!!

Now that's a pretty decent size Pickerel. I bet that bad boy could eat a nice sized perch. Perch are easy to swallow they way they are shaped. I bet that Pick can and or would attempt to eat a 7 or 8 inch perch!

I think Chain Pickerel will take a chunk outa anything that catches there eye. They never seem to be affraid to snap at me when I catch them

My experience with chain pickerel(CP) in ponds is they rarely compete well with LMB except in extremely heavily vegetated ponds and even then they tend not to do overly well. They usually don't get completely removed but just are so few in numbers you rarely catch them. Sort of like GSF in a pond with BG and LMB. The ponds I see CP doing best are ponds that are acidic, sometimes too acidic for LMB to live in or at a minimum restricting LMB growth.

I have played around with CP in ponds and they are much like NP in their feeding behavior. However, they don't get huge like pike can. IME, CP are not a good addition to a LMB pond as they will simply become LMB food. In an all SMB pond, I have seen them hold their numbers better and could perhaps be an additional bonus fish and even be used to manage SMB numbers.

They are not as restricted in their spawning success as are NP in ponds. I have had success with them spawning in a number of different pond types. IME in good conditions you can expect CP to average 14"-16" in most ponds and in great conditions, 18". The largest CP I've raised in a pond was 24.5" and 5 pound 6 oz.

There are numerous CP in the creek behind our hunting cabin in PA and that has been one of the sources I used for years for stocking other ponds as CP are not commercially available. There are two mill ponds I fish in VA that are highly acidic, hold no bass and contain a population of CP, YP, fliers, PS, creek chubsuckers and GSH. They were another source of CP for me. Even though those ponds are highly acidic and not fertile, they still regularly grow CP over 20". CP are far more tolerant to warm water temperatures than are NP. In extremely warm waters they may be hard to catch but they will survive. Water temps in to the mid 90's have been observed with CP surviving fine. CP are native all the way to middle FL, so high temperatures would not be an issue.

In a pond without LMB or SMB but only YP, I see no reason why they wouldn't do well and help crop off middle range YP. As the primary predatory fish, you'll have to manage their numbers just like you would with LMB or SMB. I have seen them stunt and you end up with many 8"-12" pencils that are starving.

You're biggest challenge is finding a source of them... It's going to have to be from the wild as I am not aware of any commercial sources. So if CP are high on your list, be careful in sourcing them from clean BOW's and attempt to source only healthy fish. Also consider that most states, NY probably included has a minimum length limit for keeping them. I can say, a 24" CP will easily swallow a 6" GSF and an 8" RBT. Not sure on how large a YP it could swallow, but I suspect, in the area of 8" like with the trout. Few of your CP will be in that range... Most will be in the 12"-20" range. Which means they'll be focusing on 4"-7" YP. A good size range to remove... Not cropping trophy YP like NP do.

Yeah you got that right Cody. They are not shy that's for sure! With that said I wonder how small of a body of water is to small to have them in??? Would they do ok in a 1 acre pond or is that to small???

f-f-f: looks like good body condition on it, too! Chunky.

CJ,

Thats some good info. right there thanks. I have a spot here I can catch them and was wondering how they may do. I was thinking of just adding a couple just to see if they would make it.

I catch a ton of them at Ft. Indian Town Gap Memorial lake... they chase the bass you catch up to the boat. I would not want one in my 1/2 acre pond :)They are good eating you just need a big one and know how to filet it right.

Well guys I've got a friend with an only pickerel bluegill pond and he said take as many as i want, his pond is a small private pond that is about 8 feet deep, and probably about 3/4 to 1 acre. We catch them all the time at a lake near my house over 20" is common, and the biggest ive got was probably 25-28 inches, and no it isn't a fishing story he hit about a 7 inch live perch that i was realing in, I have also caught some out of this same lake that have had trout in their stomachs. After the pond gets dug out in the spring il definetley keep u guys posted on it.

I think my combination may work out just perfect, I have readmany pond books on types of fish to choose for northern ponds. A problem commonly seen in northern ponds is not having cold or deep enough water to sustain trout populations. But is to cold to give large mouth bass enough growing time. But with my combination of fish they are active year round, the shiners that are to large for the yellow perch could be fed upon by the pickerel, and the pickerel will be managed if numbers become out of hand. Thus making the CP, YP, GSH, FHM possibly a great northern pond combination.

Hey Seny,

I agree dude!! Sounds like a great time. Get you some small equipment and those CP are a blast to catch too!! Just keep a glove in your tackle box cause those bad boys are a little on the toothy side!!! Keep us posted as to how it goes. I wouldnt mind trying it myself one day if it works for you! How big did you say your pond was I can't remember?