Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations When to start fishing for YP

Going into year 2 with my pond I plan to be able to see some YP ribbons soon here in NE OH. My pond is about 2 acres and currently I have 400 YP, 300 BG, 50 HSB. The YP and BG are all 2 yrs old. My goals for the pond all along have been to catch and eat lots of YP and BG. At what point is it safe to start fishing for them and keeping them? I do not want to put too much pressure on them during spawning so I can wait however long if needed. Is there a certain water temperature I should wait for before dropping a line to ensure their spawn was successful?

We find here in Ontario that they spawn end of April early May. After the spawn they feed heavy.

We started in 2012 with 400 in an acre pond. Kids started fishing them spring 2013 and have not stopped. Catch and release till 2014 where we have taken 25-30 per year of stocked fish.

Now we have started a slot size 8-10" all can come out. We do feed pellets each year at a rate of about 100#'s total.

We do find the best tasting perch are perch killed with ice. The hypothermia pushes all the blood into their organs to save their life and leaves the meat flaky and light tasting. We harvest the perch mothers day and fathers day and have all the family over for a big fry.

Cheers Don.

EDIT: P.S. the perch stocked were in the 6-8"s range 90% were 6" in fall of 2012.

I wholeheartedly agree with DonoBBD’s recommendation above about hypothermic treatment of harvested YP. We started doing this last year for both YP and HBG. I thought they were good before! Really helps. I seriously overstocked YP three years ago, and harvested at a slightly higher rate then, than I am now. I’m just not sure how many survived. My pond is always on the rise during the spawning season for YP, so it’s difficut to see how many ribbons I actually have.

KRM, I'm shocked you don't have ribbons yet especially with the number of YP you have. We are north of you by a bit and had ribbons starting 10 days ago and more this past few days. I can see why Dono may be later in April due to being slightly more north possibly.

Canyon, to be honest I have not had a chance to check for ribbons yet. The pond is at my property which is about 20 minutes from my home. I usually get out there on the weekends but was out of town last weekend. I will check it out later this week and see if I have any. I know at my folks place which is just around the corner from my pond they have seen tons of ribbons already. I probably do have some.

Good, let us know. However if I reread my post it is based on the possibly false assumption that latitude makes a difference. I was assuming that water temp was the key and that northern locations stay colder longer, and have less direct sun angle so the pond will warm up more slowly based on amount of sunlight hours and sunlight angle.

But we don't know what makes YP spawn at nearly the exact hour and day last year to this year in my pond even though our winter this year was way different than last year. It could easily be that their trigger is not water temp but actually has to do with length of the day, or cumulative hours of 'light' or daylight. As days start lengthening maybe that is the real thing that drives their biological clock and not water temp alone.

there was a thread about this last year. We had people all over the US chiming in on when they saw perch ribbons. We saw that people in Canada, Minnesota and all the way down to Missouri and even places south all seemed to see the first ribbon within a week of each other. That means that water temp may not be the trigger since southern ponds warmed up at least a week earlier or more than northern ponds.

I guess the experiment would have to be to take gravid female and keep water say at 45 degrees F and keep them in a covered tank that has only a few hours of artificial light compared to similar YP outside in a pond at same water temp but with natural lengthening of the day light hours and see who drops eggs first

Hello.

Here I have still ice on my pond,April is very cold this year.

After having some problems with the food, I give them nothing to eat before and during the spawning.

After the spawning I start fishing, they are so hungry they bite even after the lead

A+