Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? Fish ID

Hey all. Long time since I have posted. My dam broke a few years ago. It didn't fully drain. We had a deep hole where apparently some fish survived. So far I have found Golden Shiners and this fish in my trap. I think it's a RES, but thought I would ask the crowd. Pond was stocked with RES, BG, HSB, FHM, and CC. I don't think fish from the nearby stream could have swam into the pond, but it is possible.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/5x9u5l7ptqfkkab/AABD_pdxxbjcHlNjMV47GRABa?dl=0

Looks like a GSF.

Can green sunfish have the red gill flap and red eyes? It did definitely have a larger mouth than a blue gill.

Looks GSF to my eye as well. Immature GSFcan have the red eye mark, especially when eating lost of crustaceans like amphipods or isopods. Fins also get a reddish orange tint. Adults more than 3" loose the reds.


Note the short spines and rays on the dorsal fin when compared to other sunfishes like RES, BG and Longear Sunfish likely to be found in your area. Mouth size is not all that reliable as that may vary as a function of diet.

Looks GSF to me also.

So it is a bit of a poo poo parade to have GSF in the pond. We planning on dumping some fish in next Wednesday to start renovating the forage.

Here are the thoughts for the 2 acre pond.

Already in the ponds
- Golden Shiners
- Green Sunfish
- Maybe some FHM but not a lot.

Planning on stocking

250 3" bluegill
150 5" bluegill
200 Channel Kitties
100 Red Ears

The fish guy acted like sometimes people use BG to "nuetralize" the GSF by allowing them to hybridize with the GSF. I don't think I will ever get rid of them completely, but with some aggressive trapping and fishing do you think I could control the GSF population.

Probably Fall 2018 or Spring 2019 I will add some HSB and a few LMB.

Any thoughts?

Can you provide any more info on what is in there now like #s and size ? If there are adult fish now things may change. adult GSF will eat the 3 in BG.

You can stock BG and over time let them out reproduce the GSF. They do not neutralize each other but may well hybridize. That is a lot of CC.

I have not seen any GSF bigger than 3 inches but I am sure there could be some bigger ones. The pond had roughly a .2 acre hole about 12-15 foot that was not disturbed for a couple of years after our dam broke. I threw a hook in and only would catch some larger GSH. I never caught any sunfish. Now the dam is fixed and we are about 3 feet from full. Now we have quite a few baby fish around the edges and I started trapping them to see what they were. Mostly they are shiners but I have caught a few GSF in the minnow trap. I suppose it would be smart to upgrade to slightly larger stocking fish. I was hoping the BG might have a chance to spawn 1 more time this year if I got them in shortly.

My family eats a lot of CC. The DNR website said 100 per acre and 30 ever other year afterwards. How many do you think we should stock if we are feeding?

You missed BG breeding season for 2017.

Will you be feeding the CC ? If so I would only put in 75 and then 2 years later 50 more if you have no CC offspring. But it depends on how much you feed , water quality and how many you take out.

Using larger 5 inch BG will work.