I have a five acre pond max depth of 15 feet lots of stone and gravel. I have just stocked 500 redbreast sunfish and 200 redear sunfish. The forage is fathead minnows and crayfish. Next summer I am adding 125 Smallmouth. I read that smallmouth only eat about 30% fish and most of that is YP even if there is BG and other sunfish in the pond. How many should I add. Goals are smallmouth and a few pan fish harvests.

It will be interesting to hear what the experts think about the redbreast sunfish relative to the SMB. Most here do not recommend BG with SMB. I am hoping to add my first SMB this fall after adding a few larger YP and small RES last fall.

Redbreast spawn less than BG and I caught them growing up is why I chose them. LMB eat up the redbreast to quick and than got skinny.

Do they have a larger mouth gape and are they more predacious? They may be an added predator if so, and can upset your plans.

No they have a small mouth gape just like BG. How many YP would be safe. May not answer for a while going to wyolming for a funneral.

Dave Willis had a graval pit project with small mouth and pumpkin seeds.
Pumpkins reproduce much faster than RES but I dont know how they compare to BG. I talked to him about a bond I was putting together with RES and Small mouth and he liked the idea of adding perch. This pond is eventually getting walleye too.

"No they have a small mouth gape just like BG" which fish are you taking about? LMB SMB RES YP or your redbreasts?

comparativily dont YP have a larger mouth gape than BG?

Redbreast

Are you sure?

Looks bigger than a bluegill to me. Looks more like a green sunfish gape.

They seem to grow into their mouth. At full size they look like a BG mouth

http://s1370.photobucket.com/user/charle...zjvkox.png.html

I don't know why they start with a large mouth but they do there is a adult.

So with these fish would 200 yp be right.

Yellow perch numbers of 200-300 are okay. You may eventually need to manually thin RBS numbers due to SMB selectively preying on minnows, YP and crayfish. It will be an interesting fishery to sample in 4-6 yrs.

Thanks I hope to eat a few sunfish and still get smb

Yes I think yellow perch and crayfish habitat in the north is a nice combo for natural feed. Our perch have left the feeder the first week of June and have not gone back on it. We have 1.5" crayfish under every rock you turn over in the pond.

Good thing is only $100 in feed and I still have half of it this year.

Cheers Don.

Of the thousands of RBS I have handled from fry to 10"+ over the years, I have not noticed them growing into their mouths. It's been my experience, they have a larger mouth than BG, but not nearly as large as GSF. They are a bit more piscavorous than BG but not nearly as aggressive as GSF. Because they are more fusiform in shape and have a much lower fecundity than BG, I think they make one of the better sunfish species candidates to stock with SMB. I especially like the golden morph form of the RBS.

I stocked a few gold color but the seller said they will have normal fry when they breed with normal redbreast because of it being recessive. Thanks for input I meant by growing into it that as they get older the mouth seems to be more like a BG.