When I stocked a forage base last fall I put in 20 pounds of fatheads and 5 pounds of golden shiners. The FH should have plenty of places to spawn since I added structure for that. The shiners, on the other hand, probably won't have any vegetation to span on on/in this year. I have seen spawning mats for sale but decided to try a cheaper route after seeing some comments posted here. I went to Lowes and picked up some furnace filters made out of "natural material" (not fiberglass).


The mats are 20"x30"x1". I was thinking of cutting each of them lengthwise to make 2 15"x30"x1" mats and using stakes to stand them in the pond.

You think it will attract GSH to spawn? How deep should I place them? Bunch them together or spread them out?

I always observed GSH spawning where the grass was overhanging the shore in the shallows, so I'd try along the shore in water 4" to 8" deep. I think I'd spread them out in different areas, but that's just a hunch to spread your bets.

Rob this should help.

From :

Volume and Lipid, Fatty Acid, and Amino Acid Composition of

Golden Shiner Eggs during a Spawning Season

S. E. LOCHMANN,* K. J. GOODWIN, R. T. LOCHMANN, N. M. STONE, AND T. CLEMMENT

Aquaculture/Fisheries Center, University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff,

1200 North University Drive, Mail Slot 4912, Pine Bluff, Arkansas 71601, USA

North American Journal of Aquaculture 69:116–126, 2007

Copyright by the American Fisheries Society 2007

DOI: 10.1577/A05-094.1



Golden shiner reproduction begins in the spring

when water temperature reaches 20C and usually ends

when water temperatures reach 27C. In Arkansas,

reproduction usually occurs between April and June,

and there is a common belief that eggs produced after

June are of poorer quality (Stone et al. 1997).

Fecundity of golden shiners varies with size and ranges

between 2,000 and 200,000 eggs/female (Robison and

Buchanan 1988). Golden shiners are fractional spawners,

releasing 200–500-egg portions disjunctively at

numerous times throughout the spawning season. The

adhesive eggs are released over aquatic vegetation.

Eggs from multiple females accumulate on the

vegetation and receive no further parental care.



Fish were fed

a commercially available extruded, pelleted feed (40%

protein, 9% fat; Rangen, Inc., Angleton, Texas) at a

rate of 5% of initial body weight in daily single

feedings and maintained according to the methods of

Clemment (2003). This diet is higher in protein and

lipid than diets fed to golden shiner in commercial

ponds, but we wanted to examine patterns of nutrient

deposition in eggs of fish fed a nutrient-dense diet so

that nutrient availability would not be a limiting factor.



A traditional method of golden shiner production on

farms is to allow spawning on mats placed into brood

ponds. Depending upon conditions, thousands to

hundreds of thousands of eggs may be laid on a single

0.35-m2 spawning mat in a 24-h period (Stone et al.

2005). Egg-laden mats are transferred to nursery ponds

or moved indoors into water-flow-through tanks.



A 4-cm-thick spawning mat (47 x 37 cm) made of

Spawntex (Aquatic Eco-Systems, Inc., Apopka, Florida)

was placed in the tank. The mat was suspended 2–

3 cm below the water surface from polyvinyl chloride

floats. The mat was visually inspected daily for 111 d

(16 March to 4 July) for the presence of eggs.


Spawntex Spawning Mat



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