Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose TJ's SMB Babies need a good home!

Hey all;

First off, sure have missed everyone. I've been buried with a new project the past four weeks and trying to keep my head above water. Things are starting to smooth out, thankfully, and I hope to get back in touch with my Pond Boss forum family soon.

I announced earlier this Summer we pulled off a successful SMB spawn in one of my reproduction ponds - we were excited and thankful for the guidance of the forum in getting us there. Now that Fall approaches - I need to seine and find a home for my little bronze beauties.

Rex is headed here the week of October 11th and has offered to take as many back home with him as we need - provided some of you out there are in need of YOY SMB. I believe those he can't deliver directly he's planning on shipping via air freight as he has successful experience doing so.



I didn't discover I had SMB recruitment until around 6-8 weeks ago when I finally verified via angling. I caught around a dozen all about this size - 4", with a little low WR. Since that time I've been feeding 2x daily AM 500 and now introducing 600. To help boost growth I've also been hand feeding them .75 - 1" bullfrog tadpoles I gather from my other ponds - 4x week about 250 daily. They hardly hit the water before the SMB obliterate them. Great fun!

I can't estimate with any confidence total quantity of YOY, but I'm guessing we're around 500 4-6" fish. I have this offer out to some local folks but no one has spoken for any - yet. I imagine this will change quite soon. I don't want to overwinter them - so moving them soon is a priority. If you are in need of SMB please contact me and let me know. I have no clue what costs are involved in delivering or shipping the fish - so I'll need to check with Rex on those details depending upon your location.

FYI - I'd love to be able to pay for a few months electricity by moving these fish, but I'm not at all motivated by $ - I'm so far underwater on my reproduction projects there's no saving me now. As always, I'm primarily focused on helping others in need of achieving their dreams of establishing a SMB fishery of their own - maybe I can come fish and visit my babies someday!

Mods - I'm not a paid advertiser - so if you need to remove this I understand. Don't mean to step out of bounds.

TJ

TJ,

Did you do anything special to feed train them or did they automatically gravitate to the pellets?

young smallmouth usually always gravitate to pellets. as they get older the percentage decreases, but even older native smallmouths take pellets much more readily than older native largemouths.

Congratulations TJ! My offer to lend a hand is still definitely on the table. Would love to meet Rex too!

Those smallies are worth good money. So are the bullfrog tadpoles. You have permission to solicit to sell them...

I'm sure that's true but it may depend on the strain or how long they have been domesticated Nate. I say that because when I got some from Mike Robinson of Keystone years ago he told me they were a PI the A to get on pellets and sometimes wouldn't stay on them.

My pellet trained smallies have gravitated to the fatheads and small bluegills vs. the pellets. I'm hoping when they exhaust them they will get back on the pellets.

For sure! Not many producers of smallmouth. Congrats TJ.

On the other hand there is a fly in the oinment regarding the sale of frogs. There's a fungus killing off frogs across the country, and APHIS is proposing required testing (expensive) for a those that sell frogs or have frogs mixed in with the fish they sell:


USFWS Petition to Halt Spread of

Amphibian Disease, Chytrid Fungus



The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced it has posted a notice in the Federal Register seeking information concerning the possible designation of all live amphibians or their eggs that are infected with chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis or Bd) as “injurious wildlife” under the Lacey Act.



The fungus causes chytridiomycosis, a disease deadly to amphibians, and has been identified as a primary factor leading to the listing of a number of amphibian species as threatened or endangered. If finalized, the designation as “injurious” would require a health certification that live amphibians or their eggs are not infected with chytrid fungus prior to import or transportation across state lines.



Designation of amphibians carrying chytrid fungus as “injurious species” would have many important implications for US producers:



- The inadvertent inclusion of an amphibian, which includes tadpoles, in a load of live aquatic animals would be a violation of the Lacey Act.

- Producers of amphibians would most likely be required to obtain individual certificates of inspection for each interstate movement of amphibians.

- The regulation of chytrid fungus as an “injurious species” bypasses existing regulatory approaches and agencies that regulate the interstate movement of important diseases.



The primary goal of this proposed designation is to prevent the spread of chytrid fungus to wild populations of amphibians, however, scientific investigations* that have looked at the current distribution of chytrid have found the fungus to be widely distributed already in wild amphibians in North America including the East, the Rocky Mountains, and the Pacific Northwest.



The Notice of Inquiry was published in the Federal Register (attached) on September 17, 2010, and explains the chytrid fungus issue and asks the public to provide information on the subject. The submissions will be reviewed and a decision made whether to proceed with a proposed rule or to take no further action.



The NAA urges all members to submit comments opposing the listing of live amphibians infected with the chytrid fungus as injurious wildlife.



For more details, and to submit comments, go to http://www.regulations.gov under Docket No. FWS-R9-FHC-2009-0093. The public will have until December 16, 2010, to provide information on the subject of the petition.











* Ouellet, M et al (2005) Historical Evidence of Widespread Chytrid Infection in North American Amphibian Populations. Conservation Biology 19:1431-1441.



Muths, E. et al. (2008) Distribution and environmental limitations of an amphibian pathogen in the Rocky Mountains, USA. Biological Conservation 141:1484-1492.

Pearl, C. A. (2007) Occurrence of the Amphibian Pathogen Batrachochytrium Dendrobatidis in the Pacific Northwest. Journal of Herpetology 41(1):145-149.

Read the next PB issue to find out why TJ's fingerling SMB were first caught offshore !!

That is awesome TJ! Hopefully one of our fellow pond meisters can take advantage of this opportunity.

Ditto Omaha!

Depending on my delivery schedule to the eastern middle of the US, we may have to bust downTJ's gates and seine ourselves....you distract and I'll ram the gates!

I am a master distracter Rex! I won't let you down!

FWIW, the tadpole thing is just a proposal and is far from being another regulation.

Thanks Bob/All. Really great to hear from everyone!

Wasn't aware BF Tadpoles were a commodity. If anyone needs any I literally have thousands and they are easy to capture in my minnow traps.

I have lots of Tadpoles but I would like to know what a hundred or so of those smallies would cost to get here to zipcode 16403...as long as the money didn't go for more economic stimulus I would be interested.

Joe sent you a PM.

Cecil,

I trained my SMB the same way I trained my BG - started by feeding them hoppers. Once I got their attention, I introduced softened pellets - very few at a time. Then I graduated to AM 500 floating - now they're hitting 600 too. Not sure of the logic behind my method, but both my BG and SMB were rejecting floating pellets until I tried this. Can't recommend this process for anyone else, but it worked for me - and was a lot of fun!

TJ - you've really encapsulated the history of fish culture. Difficult to train species or strains were often started with some more palatable food item and then gradually weaned to a dry diet. The fish hatcheries of the late 1800s had grinders -- ground liver was a favorite to start a lot of the trouts onto feeding, especially when they only had the wild strains with which to work.

Of course I did...was my intent all along, of course.

Anyone else ever use BF tadpoles to feed their fish? It's a blast...if my water was gin clear like Nate's I'd take some video. Like lighting firecrackers and throwing them in the water - POW!

I bucketed probably near a thousand leopard frog tadpoles from the sitting water in my half dug pond early this summer. For the heck of it the kids and I took them home and put them in a smaller aquarium next to the larger aquarium with the bass, catfish, gar, etc. in it. I would occasionally throw in a couple small net fulls and they were nailed immediately.

I've been told that bass don't like the taste of tadpoles. Obviously, that opinion was way off.

Firecrackers and water???

TJ wouldn't let that happen at his pond Scott. Bruce's sure, but not his own.

TJ, good to hear you had a great SMB hatch.
I also get tons of tadpoles hatching in my pond but I'm not sure which fish take advantage of them, since you've had good luck feeding them to the smb next year I'll bring a bunch back here and see if the PS's in the mini pond eat them, their favorite live snack are crickets, they explode into action when I toss one in.

BIG firecrackers!!!
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For use in Bruce's ponds only

Yes that's why I used the word "proposal" in the post. However since I've been in the fish business many of these so called "proposals" become law. The comment periods are only a formality until APHIS forces it down our throats.

The VHS sham is one example.

dont tell me you guys never lit firecrackers and tossed them into the water? better yet are bottlerockets...or something bigger! just make sure it's not YOUR pond!