This is probably a dumb question....however just looking for confirmation. I have 100s of tadpoles and a few very small bullfrogs per every 4’ of shoreline. I would guess easily 10,000 tadpoles that hang out in the first foot of water.
Don’t fish eat them? BG, Bass, Etc.? This is a good thing right?
Usually it's hard to have a good population of bullfrogs if there is a good population of decent size LMB. The only exception tends to be if there is some sort of weedy refuge where the fish can't easily get to them.
I have LMB and lots of BG in pond, CC in it as well. Not sure if I have any bigger bass but I don’t think the pond is over crowded with them either. I would just think everything would want to eat 1-1.5” tadpoles but maybe not.
Some tadpoles can leave a nasty taste in a fishes mouth making them fairly safe from predation.
A few weeks back I was walking around the pond and found literally thousands of tiny tadpoles swimming in inches of water on the shoreline. I'm quite sure they were tree frog as I have only seen two bulldogs in my pond and these were way too small to be bulldog.
Anyway, I went back out the next morning and couldn't find a single one. The panfish had totally decimated them in a days time.
I read fish will not eat american bullfrog tadpole because they secrete a bad tasting toxin. Tadpole of the leopard frog species are not able to do this though
I have caught fish while using bullfrog tadpoles. They may not be their favorite food, but they are on the list of edibles, just towards the bottom. Here's the story...
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=37684&Number=491232#Post491232I do know that my pond is severely lacking in tadpoles this year compared to last. The difference is that I stocked 3 to 6" HSB, HBG, and RES. Last year was biblical with no predators!