im catching alot of these 2-3 inch minnows that have red on the tips of there tails and also have red specs down the length of there body, they are slender, minnow like body. the pond is in mississippi along the gulf. sorry i need to open an account with photo bucket before i can post a pic. i have noticed them like crazy after i took out about a 40x10 foot section of alligator weed, which i killed first then removed by hand
Try posting a pic, that is the only way an accurate ID can be made... I have a couple of guesses, but until I see a pic I cannot be sure.
RAH,
Menhaden - A baitfish Found on the Gulf coast and eastern seaboard up through the Chesapeake Bay and parts north. I know it well, having lived on the Bay for 20 years.
RAH, what BOW did that fish come from? If it's not from salt or brackish water, I'd think GS.
It came from my freshwater pond in central Indiana (about 1.3 acres). I thought it might be a golden shiner since I added 60 minnow-sized shinners from a bait shop a couple months ago. I know this is a bit risky, but I looked at each fish to see if they all looked the same. Is it possible for golden shiners to grow from 3" bait fish into this sized fish in less than two months? This seems like increadible growth! I have never seen a fish like this in the pond before, and I caught two of these in a minnow trap where the pipe leaves the pond yesterday. I added these along with 10 lbs of FHM this spring after a fish kill. I have since seen surviving LMB and BG, so I thought that I had bought expensive fish food.
Could it be gizzard shad? The mouth and tail look similar to pictures I saw on the web.
Without a doubt that is a gizzard shad...
Menhaden although closely related and very similar in appearance have a very different mouth structure. Gizzard shad have a subterminal mouth, as in it's oriented more on the underside of the fish. This enables to feed well on bottom substrates. While menhaden have more of terminal leaning almost Up-pointing mouths, enabling them to be very effective surface filter feeders. The fact that the fish came out of a freshwater pond almost makes it impossible for it to be a menhaden. They can tolerate lower salinities, but not freshwater ponds.
I stand corrected, Shad it is.
OK - What effect will gizzard shad have on my pond? And could 3" minnows grow to this size in less than 2 months?
Gizzard shad have extremely fast growth rates, it is possible IMO...
Gshad will directly compete with your smaller BG for food. They will also begin to take up a large percentage of your pond's biomass if there are not adequate numbers of LMB and/or other predators to remove large numbers of young. You can expect gshad to be 6" by the end of the first growing season and even larger up to 9" or more. This can put them out of range for most predators in a pond in a hurry. Are you sure they are established in your pond or could this one be a fluke? IME, gshad in ponds of your size is a VERY bad thing. So bad, it may require a complete start over with poisoning.
I found only two, and they were below the exit tube. It is possible that they came up the very small stream that exits the tube/pond during recent rains, but I am not hopeful. I will wait and see.
It is very possible, so the gshad as I understand it, where not caught in your actual pond, but in the stream below it? If so, them hopefully they were not able to ascend the whole way up into your pond...
GS are bad for a pond (very bad) unless you have large predators that can eat fish that get over 12" long. Somebody years ago stocked some in a local public lake (probably thinking they were T shad). Now they (the gizzard shad) make up 60% of the fish biomass according to the last DNR gillnet study.
If they take over the pond, I'll put in some walleye to clean things up (and hope for the best). I just took another 50 fish out from below the exit tube. All appeared to be BG or too small for me to tell. The tube has a 6 foot drop over 60 feet and then a one foot rise from an Agridrain flash-board device at the pond. Fast water and then a jump for any fish to navigate. I have also heard that gizzard shad do not tolerate low DO very well, so another winter like the last should take its toll. I did not see any shad-looking fish dead after last winter's kill, so maybe I am OK. I put all of the rescued fish is a very shallow pond that the creek floods into every few years, so I cannot really control what gets into it. It is at max 5' deep but is full of nice warmouth's, BG, and a couple nice LMB. I'll lose them sometime due to the shallow water, but its fun to fish right now.
Don't plan on walleye (WE) to do much for controlling abundant gshad. If that were true many reserviors -small lakes would not have dominant biomass of GS, if just WE stocking could get it done.
Well, maybe they are not in the pond...
If you can get photos of some of those too small to tell fish, we might be able to ID them for you...
