Silly question but here goes. Pond newly dug 4 years ago and stocked 30 pounds of fhm in a 2 acre pond along with 2000 cnbg and 400 res. After about a month I never really saw fhm anywhere. Put 50 lmb in a year later. My question is...everyone seems to say the lmb will wipe out the fhm first and then feed mostly on cnbg. I get that. Here it is 4 years down the road and in the shallowest of water (2 inch) in only very protected areas I see what looks like some type of minnow about 1-2 inch range. These don't look or act like cnbg or lmb fry. Water is too shallow for a minnow trap. Could these still be fhm? When my net style perch trap worked I never ever caught a fhm in it. When I see these little fishes there is usually not more than 3 or 4 at a time and they seem to play a cat and mouse game all the time. Each trying to chase the other one off. Any ideas what these are? If I could ever catch one I could photo id it but having no luck.

I still have a few FHM living in protected areas after nearly three years, and a very few 2" LMB were apparently (accidentally) stocked with the FHM. The largest of these LMB is now about 16 inches. Last year I stocked five more LMB at 5 to 8 inches. Also have LMB recruitment at almost 4 inches already.

Flame, if it's FHM's they will play soccer ball with fish food and will push it all around. I suspect it is gams. They pay very little attention to fish food and they like 2" water depths.

Hey Flame. If you can get a good look at some of those larger minnows, see if they've got a black spot on the back bottom of their abdomen, near the vents. It'll be very evident on a two inch GAM. If that spot isn't there, it's possibly some FHM recruitment. I have loads of GAMs in my pond and its easy to ID them by that belly spot.

Thanks guys, Tracy these do ignore any fish food so maybe gams. I didn't stock any though.

Sounds like Gams. FHM will tend to school (unless a male guarding nest) and spend very little time on the surface. Will come to the surface to feed but will immediately revert to the safety of the bottom. Gams on the other hand lounge about the surface or near surface in very shallow water.

I did not stock gams in my RES pond but Bob Lusk spotted them immediately when we drove around the pond in the UTV. I figure I got them transferred through some water primrose with snails and associated algae I transferred to the pond from another pond that had gams. Maybe eggs or tiny fry. Otherwise they arrived by immaculate conception. That is my theory and I'm sticking to it.

I went back and checked the common acronym post for GAMs. Couldn’t find it. Some kind of minnow?

Gambusia minnow. Commonly reffered to as "mosquito fish". Apparently they eat mosquito larva.And apparently I don't have NEAR enough of them!!!

I have mosquito fish in my year old pond thick(no bass yet)!. They came from little pools in the ditch that I dammed up and have multiplied even more than the FHM from what I can tell. They will attack pieces of white bread like piranhas.

Note they don't lay eggs but the female gives "birth" to live young.

i think Small fish of almost any type will eat mosquito larvae, including BG, LMB, etc.

Gams will show up here in E Texas when we get a good rain event. They will also show up in deeper tire tracks and ditches etc. around your property after rain events.

I stocked gams the first year and the LMB yoy had a field day on them, but they are still here at year 4

Its too bad GAMs don't get much bigger than 1.5", at least in my pond anyway. They sure are prolific fish. No matter how hard my BG and GSF hammer on them, they always seem to be able to survive. The GSF seem to be done spawning now, with only a few BG still tending nests at the moment, and I have fry everywhere. The GAMs are mixed right in with them and seem to love the feed as much as the rest. I've been hydrating the feed and they gang up to chisel away at the soft edges.

Do GAMs feed on the smallest of the fry or are they primarily larval feeders? Either way, they sure do like pellets.

Gambusia will feed on anything living that they can get in their small mouths. They stay in very shallow water in warm months, so they are only a threat to fry in very shallow water.

My Gams like to hang around my water well additions to the pond. The water temp is near 72 degrees there and I will have a hundred or so Gams there when I am adding water to the pond. The water is shallow, only a few inches deep. I have been seeing some small 4" lmb moving into that water and feeding on the gams. I hide in the bushes, setting in the side by side and watch the small lmb run in and bust up the gam schools. Lots to see at the pond if you take the time to look.