Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Fish ID

Assuming a pond with BG and also GSF, what do you think the odds are these little ones are pure bluegill?

Can one tell at this size? The picture doesnt show it well but they have the real pretty purplish iridesence

Hard to tell. If you have more pics please post them. Under normal conditions and equal and adequate numbers of BG and GSF most (a high %) offspring will be pure BG and pure GSF. A few may be HBG. Most of those look like BG to me but better pics would help.

I agree with ewest. Those appear to be primarily BG and no GSF and lot likely HBG.

I would concur with the above two opinions but theirs hold a lot more credibility than mine.

GSF can have some vertical bars though not as common and not that pronounced. Those look like BG to me.

In my opinion you are most likely to get hybrids when either one of the species has limited availability of partners or turbid water or limited spawning areas where there can be some confusion involved in the process of spawning. Under normal spawning conditions each species will seek out their own kind so natural produced hybrids are reasonably rare.

I got lots of hybrids produced in my small 1/10th acre sediment pond but there were only a very few GSF so they had limited choices of partners and since it is a sediment pond periodically at times of high rain runoff there was great turbidity. Both these conditions is what I consider the reasons for so many hybrids.

Thanks for the input gentlemen. I will add a couple more photos but they may not be much better. One of what I think are GSF and the other BG. Also have a lot of large tadpoles, I assume are bullfrog. Some have back legs starting. I was surprised to learn via Google they will overwinter just fine.

GSF:


BG:

Looks like a fine crop of GSF (pic 1) , BG (pic 2) and a fat aspiring frog.

Yep, what ewest said on the fish.

Bullfrog tadpoles I think have to be able to over winter. They take two years to mature into a frog.

Thanks again. I had drained this small 0.4 acre down to a puddle last Saturday when it was nice and intended on saving a bunch of the tadpoles and bluegill, but a bout of food poisoning/stomach flu knocked me on my arse. I didnt have a good sorting process, felt miserable and finally through in the towel Sunday. If they survive the low water/depleted oxygen and freezing temps later this week I will try again this weekend.

That sucks feeling bad when you have things you want to do. Heck it sucks even when you don't have anything to do!

Hope you get to feeling better.

Bad thing about bad water conditions, BH and GSF will be among the last survivors. They are tough suckers. That is why they are about the only fish we will see in local seasonal creeks on a regular basis. Other fish might come up during a flood and last for a while. But the GSF and BH just hang in there when all the rest die.

Get well soon. That is priority one.