Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Help Me Please

I built a new 2 acre pond on our farm in Randolph County Missouri 3 years ago. It was completed in May 2006. Due to drought it wasn't full enough to stock until the following spring. We followed the Missouri Dept. of Conservation guidelines and had a local fish farm stock fatheads, bluegill and channel cat in april 2007. I substituted redear for about 1/3 of the bluegill about. I also had them throw in an additional 10 lbs of golden shiners. Unfortunately, due to flooding, none of the fish farms in my region could supply largemouth until October 2008. I was worried that the sunfish might overpopulate without predators for so long but I talked to the MDC fisheries biologist and he thought it would be fine. We have been feeding the cats all along at least 2-4x per week. (We live 8 miles from the farm.)

During the summer of 2008 I took my 5 year old son out to catch a few catfish. We only did it once since they were only in there for about 16 months at the time. We caught a couple bluegill and tossed them back.

Fast forward to the present. The bass have been in since October. The past two weekends were the first opportunity we had to fish this summer due to having 4 kids in sports. I took the kids and targeted bluegill and cats. Immediately, I became concerned when we started catching GREEN SUNFISH one after another. I thought "Whats up with this!" The only thing a green sunfish is good for in my book is catfish bait so we cut them up and used them for that, catching several really nice cats. What concerns me is that they shouldn't have been in there in the first place! We caught at least 40 green sunfish for every bluegill or redear. In fact, you can see thousands of little greenies chasing your jig right up to the bank. What is worse is that they have decimated the fatheads completely. There are some huge golden shiners because they come up when we feed the cats, and we catch them on jigs too.

I am worried that although those tens of thousands of greenies will be food, they will also compete with them for food and eat alot more of the bass fry than bluegills or redears will. I am furious, so I called the fish farm's number and it is no longer in service. I hope they went bankrupt. They should have if that is how they stock.

How do I get rid of the Greenies without killing everything and starting over???? I don't want to push it all back another 2-3 years.

By the way, if fingerling bass were stocked last October, shouldn't I be seeing a few of them by now, or even catching one now and then on a beetle spin or jig. I wasn't present when the farm brought them out, my dad was. He wouldn't know a bass fry form a Green sunfish fry. The fish were provided by two different farms. If there are greenies that are as big as my hand, wouldn't they have had to come from the initial stocking?

I'm sorry I'm rambling. I've just been waiting so long to have the "perfect pond" that I'm livid about the outcome. I've been throwing every green sunfish on the bank to try to control the population but I'm sure it's a loosing battle. Any advice would be appreciated.

Hello, eyedoc, and welcome to the Forum.

Please give the numbers and sizes of each species (supposedly) stocked.

GSF make great bass forage, short term, until their numbers have been lowered. After that, their lower spawning rates wrt BG keep them in unobtrusiveness. The few GSF left can grow to a respectable size; several of our members have trophy GSF ponds and love them. If a decent number of bass are stocked, they can grow and get fat on the Greenies.

Welcome to the forum eyedoc1!

OK, here are my concerns... First, if you had a long delay between the sunfish stocking and bass stocking, and there was a green sunfish(GSF) contamination, many of the GSF could have put on some size before your fingerling bass were stocked. This leads to expensive fingerling bass going into the bellies of GSF! The GSF may or may not have cleaned your fingerling bass out. By this time, you should be seeing some bass in the pond...

How to fix the problem...

TRAP NET THE CRAP OUT OF THEM! Here is a fine EXAMPLE of what can be done to a GSF population with a trap net. You can purchase a trap net HERE. They are a hair pricey, but trust me they are WELL WORTH the investment and can be used for years to manage your pond in numerous ways...

Next you need to find out if you have any bass left in your pond... The trap net is indiscriminate and will trap all species of fish. You should get a good idea what the percentage of each species is in your pond and if any bass are left... Simple remove the wanted species and release them and keep the nasty GSF and turn them into catfish bate, fertilizer or what ever you chose to do with them.

Once you have figured out if you have bass, you can decide on additional stockings. If you find you have no bass, I would consider stocking advanced largemouth bass(LMB) at about 30 to 50 per acre. Advanced LMB being bass 10" or larger. These additional bass will immediately put the fear of death in all those little GSF and begin eating them with gusto. LMB can more easily feed on GSF as opposed to redears(RES) or bluegill(BG) because GSF have a more fusiform shape and hence fit down a LMB's mouth easier...

Personally, I think the MDC biologist gave you bad info on letting the sunfish go that long without bass predation. Maybe in Texas or Florida, but Missouri, you're asking for stunted BG and the mess you ended up with which was GSF getting a foot hold. Also, it may not be the fish suppliers fault the GSF are in your pond... GSF have amazing abilities to use high water events to make new ponds their home. However, GSF are often hitch hikers with fathead minnows(FHM), golden shiners(GSH), BG and others.

The trap net will be a great service in letting you know what you have in your pond and where to go. If you do find you have some bass, try to see what size they are and an estimated abundance. That will dictate if you need to stock any and if so, how many...

Don't panic, this is a slight set back, but a couple years of increased bass predation on the GSF and they will slowly become a negligible percentage of your pond community. You may also need to stock additional BG and RES depending on you trap net findings.

Best of luck!

Hi Eyedoc, welcome. The GSF very likely ate a goodly portion of the bass, since by the size of some of the GSF they were already in there when the bass were stocked. If the bass were stocked as fingerlings, probably a good portion of them got munched.

You should stock 8-10" LMB as soon as possible. I would also recommend stocking either northern pike or tiger muskie, about five per acre, 10-12" long each so they don't get eaten. I worked with a pond years ago that was so badly overpopulated with GSF when I first started working with it that that's all you ever caught, and none of them were over 3", most smaller; you could catch one every single cast, from anywhere in the pond. That pond was two acres, like yours. I stocked 40 one-pound LMB that I caught from nearby ponds, and 20 12" northerns that I got from a hatchery. Within three years 4-6 pound LMB were being caught very regularly, and a seven-plus pounder was caught by a friend of mine; a year or so after that someone caught a 36" northern. The LMB began spawning successfully, and the bluegill recovered and took the place of the GSF as the predominant sunfish in the pond. And the pike never decimated any of the other species, not even close.

So all is not lost, but you do need to amp up the number of predators, and pronto.

Esox in ponds are not ideal. I agree they are a cool fish and I would love to stock them into ponds myself, but Esox species, particularly the larger ones, IE msuky, tigers and northerns can cause a big mess. There may be isolated instances where they work out, but the risk is too high IMO.

Dave Willis wrote this article... Read it before you stock musky or northerns: NORTHERN PIKE ARTICLE Then you can make an educated decision what route to go.

Personally, I don't think you need a large Esox species to handle your problem. Because once you have your current problem under control, you have a whole new problem, 10 over sized Esox species and not much else...

I hear the death star warming up!

Are there any streams feeding the pond, even at very high (flood stage) water levels? Who were the fish supplliers?

I think the nets will yield the quickest results, and also give you a good idea on the % of species of fish that are currently in the pond.

It sounds like the fish farm was not managing their ponds. This happened to me about 6 or 7 years ago. NO PROBLEM. They are all gone.

I'm one that doesn't see a problem with the much maligned green sunfish. In the presence of bluegills they always get out spawned. With their once per year spawn, they just don't do a very good job of competing. The bluegill will take over.

Stocking fingerling ANYTHING is going to guarantee heavy predation with an existing fish population. Get some 6 inch bass from a reputable supplier. Emphasis on reputable. It wouldn't hurt to also stock some 4 inch bluegills. Over time, two or three years, you should see a shortage on greenies and a heckuva lot of bass growth. Due to their more elongated shape, they are a preferred food source for predators of all kinds.

In other words, I wouldn't sweat it.

CJ, are you aware that Nate Herman regularly stocks both pike and tiger muskie in the ponds and lakes he manages? He's one of the most respected pond managers in the country and on this site, and has vastly more experience than you do. He probably wouldn't be doing it if it were a bad thing. Also, you may be familiar with Bremer pond, which I believe was recently or is about to be featured in Pond Boss as an exemplary pond? It's ten acres, has northern pike, and has produced LMB over eight pounds and bluegill over 10".

Lastly, bluegill do not "always" outcompete green sunfish. They had not done so in the pond I worked with that was overrun with GSF and had been for years, as bluegill had been almost eliminated by the GSF before I stocked bass and pike; and, quite obviously, they have not been outcompeted by bluegill in this pond in question in MO, and will not be unless corrective action is taken.

Reasonable minds can disagree on a lot of things.

I'm just a South Texan, but I'd say that pike and tiger muskie would need to be monitored carefully in small waters. Same thing with the alligator gar down here that wash in after a flood.

Big predators eat a lot of food.

There's a big difference between saying that "x" fish should NEVER be stocked versus weighing the pros and cons to make an educated decision. It seems to me CJ was saying the latter.

This sounds to me pretty clearly like a complete discounting of my advice. This may be a little redundant as I just ranted in another thread in which my advice for that poster was also discounted by CJ, but I don't make recommendations based on whimsy or something I just read a week ago on the forum; I have ten years of experience managing ponds, I do it professionally, and I never recommend anything that I don't have personal experience with. As I've noted more than once, I personally have stocked pike in an almost identical situation - same exact size pond, same exact problem down to the species that has taken over. If anyone is qualified to make a recommendation for this situation, it's me. And yet my advice was dismissed as that of a casual hobbyist with no remote firsthand experience in what he's recommending. CJ mentions in the other thread I allude to that he has two years of experience managing ponds; I have ten. I'm going to go out on a limb here and wager that he's never even stocked an esocid into any pond he's worked with, and therefore has no firsthand knowledge of what he's talking about. I do have that experience. I wouldn't have made the recommendation otherwise.

Lets start with this :

Bob Lusk
Lunker


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Next some things to keep in mind.

No one has all the answers.

Every pond is different.


If you will notice the real experts on here rarely say things like "do only this , this and that" because they know what I said first above - that there are few absolutes in pond mgt


Every one in this discussion has some good points and some not so correct. That is ok so long as you state your point and don't direct comments to other individuals. It is not a good idea to tell someone they are wrong or crazy. Thank each of you for sharing time and effort here. I encourage everyone to keep an open mind and strive to learn as much as you can.

Thank you Eric, if my posts came off as personal attacks they weren't intended that way. Sometimes the exchange of ideas, even among friends can be a bit boisterous. I am sure Walt would say the same thing.

eyedoc, i have GSF and BG in my pond w/ no apex predators. what limits overpopulation and stunting in my case is SEVERE summer drawdown. the last three years i've been experimenting w/ GSF as top predator and am trying to grow them large. i currently have a good number of fish in the 9-inch, 3/4 lb range........but i digress.......

my point is what (i think) i am seeing, that without an apex predator, the GSF crush BG recruitment. if i were to add adult bass now, i strongly believe i would see what has happened in the ranch pond below me, and that would be the rather quick decimation of the GSF population, afterwhich the BG would be able recruit more and take over as the lmb forage base. bottom line as dave davidson mentioned above, you have a great forage base to grow huge bass by doing nothing other than stocking good numbers of adult lmb now.....my 2c from el dorado

Howdy, eyedoc, and welcome to the forum!!

As you can see, those green sunfish really get everyone stirred up. I've been proposing that we ban green sunfish altogether, which would prevent misunderstandings such as that which occurred above, but these moderators just won't listen to me.

In all seriousness, the greenies probably do not pose any serious threat to your pond, and will be dissipated by other fish by both depredation and spawning competition fairly quickly. In one of the ponds near me, an overpopulation of GSF corrected itself with the addition of BG even without a top notch predator; they just don't usually compete very well. My experience is obviously a little different from Dave's above.

Walt is correct in that the fastest way to fish the situation would probably be to add some LMB of a size that would knock out a lot of the small GSF-I doubt it would take very long, might even be done before the year is out.

Again, welcome to the forum, but next time, please try to post about something less controversial than GSF, why don't you try politics or religion?

LMAO

I would only recommend stocking a pike or a muskie in a situation where the owner wanted a pike or a muskie. In my opinion there really isnt a wrong or a right way to manage a pond, just 1000's of options that all depend on 1000's of variables that all boil down to what the owner wants.

From what I have gathered, Eyedoc1 would like to eliminate the green sunfish as fast as he can without killing out the pond and starting over. There have been several really good suggestions, all of which would indeed help, and I have a few of my own.

In Missouri, fishery biologists are everywhere and offer many services to assist you in achieving your perfect pond. If one is not available in a time frame suitable to your need, I would call up Shawn with Midwest Lake Management to come over and give your pond a full lake audit. On site, he could diagnose and prescribe and help you formulate a management plan that suits your goals, timeframe and budget.

Also a few suggestions I might make that havent been talked about yet would be to implement a fish feeding program to speed up the growth process and gain you a few years growth as well as potentially adding some Hybrid Striped Bass to clean up the mess. On a feeding program, they will grow faster than any other gamefish you could stock in your pond. They would clean up the greenies and then if you didnt want to continue with them you could simply catch em, eat em, and move on with a new project. They dont reproduce and are fairly easy to catch once or twice, they do get smart though!!!

If your not long gone already, shoot some more questions and definitely updates back this way. I bet ya there are some green sunfish articles in the back issues of the magazine as well?

Green Sunfish are spawned from dirt... ok not really. But if you make a pond far from water and no fish are added Green Sunfish will eventually find there way there. That is how it works were I live in Louisiana.

Point is I would not consider starting over because they will be back either way.

The good news is that they have a large mouth so you can even catch the little ones easily. So simply start taking them out and the balance will turn towards the BG.

Around here I have noticed in ponds without LMB that the green sunfish often outnumber the BG tremendously but I have never seen that situation in a pond with LMB established.

Resistance is futile.

Next some things to keep in mind.

No one has all the answers.

Every pond is different.


If you will notice the real experts on here rarely say things like "do only this , this and that" because they know what I said first above - that there are few absolutes in pond mgt


Every one in this discussion has some good points and some not so correct. That is ok so long as you state your point and don't direct comments to other individuals. It is not a good idea to tell someone they are wrong or crazy. Thank each of you for sharing time and effort here. I encourage everyone to keep an open mind and strive to learn as much as you can.

One other thing you might want to remember,I dont know anything,as a matter of fact,Im so uninformed,I dont even suspect anything.

...tell 'em about gunpowder aeration and C5 water drawdown, Tom

Is Northern Pike or Muskie reproduction a problem in ponds?

I remember touring a Wisconsin fish hatchery many moons ago, and the tour guide telling us that they stock Tiger Muskie in small waters with sunfish overpopulation because Tiger Muskie grow quickly and cannot reproduce.

Tiger Muskie are sterile and thus cannot reproduce. Northern pike reproduction could potentially occur in a cooler-water pond, i.e. one in a northern clime or a southern clime at high elevation; it would be much less likely in the South. Someone (TJ? not sure) recently posted data he had read stating that they require very specific conditions to spawn successfully even up North, those conditions including water that isn't turbid, good weedgrowth, etc.

O.K. I'm going to weigh in here and by no means do I know it all. But what I am going to say is from the school of hard knocks and what I learned in my college fisheries training. So here goes:

1.) If the green sunfish did not come in via an inlet, and/or flooding, or someone doing some unsolicited stocking, it's most likely they were put in with the fatheads, or if the hatchery wasn't so incompetent they sold you green sunfish. I say this because I have seen green sunfish mixed in with fatheads from fish farms. I planted fatheads in a holding pond to keep smallies in good condition over the winter, and lo and behold I found green sunfish when I drained the pond. I have no run off or connecting bodies of water so the only place they could have come in was with the baitfish I planted. The fatheads and baitfish up here are trucked in from large Arkansas fish farms that specialize in bait fish.

2.) Northern pike and musky are top of the line predators, but largemouths and wipers are much more effective, mainly because they can be held at higher densities. Furthermore as the NP and musky get larger, they prefer larger food items. At some point they prefer 8 inch plus bluegills and 10 inch plus largemouths. Counterproductive if you ask me as now you are competing with them.

Additonally fisheries studies have not shown them effective at turning around a stunted population. Of course it all depends on other factors and there could be situations -- especially in a smaller BOW such as a pond, where they could work.

Another thing to consider is since the NP and Musky are coolwater fish they may not be as effective in MO when water temps get really warm in summer. The bass would be at their peak while the above species many be hunkered down on the bottom.

I concur with those here that say put some advanced size lm bass, and/ or wipers and let them go to work. Or if you can't find them or don't want to pay to much put some feed trained bass in a cage and get them up to size before planting them in with the rest of the fish. I do it all the time. Not difficult at all.

ok, I grew up in da north, and I now live in da south. I love fishing for pike, none around here though.

I have fished small ponds that had trophy pike and those that had hammer handles