Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose blue gill spawn myth buster

i would like to start by giving a brief history of my pond timeline.
the pond was finished in the middle of june.

stocked appr. 800 bream. 20% res, 40%bg, and 40%cnbg august 12.

sometime around september 20th i stocked another 300 cnbg due to 100+ of the first stocking dying.

the first bream were sold to me as 1-3" fish. i doubt any of them were 3". the 2nd stocking were 1" fish.

over the last few days we have had 2.5" inches of rain and due to the small size of my pond and huge watershed, my pond fills and overflows easily. i have a couple of minnow baskets that you get from walmart. i put some pellets in 1 of them and set it below the dam in the stream yesterday. today i had 20+ small bream, not sure if they are bg or res, that were about 3/4" long. they were so small that 2 of them fell thru the wire.

the man that i spoke with from dept of conservation warned me about stocking fish that time of year. he said they would spawn and i might have too many bream come next spring when i stock my bass.... the owner of the fish farm said there was no way they would spawn august or later....some here on the forum said they would not spawn at that early of an age. today i found out different. hopefully i wont have too many next year, but thought i would share my first hand exp.

My first inclination would be to find out how old the 3 inch fish were that went in during August.

My instinct is to say that if they were stunted age-1's that are 3-4 inches in September they would be more likely to spawn than healthy age-0 fish.

I've also found (this is not to doubt you in any way) that people who think they're looking at 3 inch bluegill are often really looking at 4 inch fish. I would have wanted to see fish laying on a measuring board to be sure of actual length. I would say that at least 9 times out of ten if you show a 3.75 inch bluegill to a person they will either call it a 2 incher or a 3 incher. A 3.75 inch age-1 fish has a significantly higher chance of turning a late summer spawn than an actual 3 inch age-0 fish.

Could it be that your 3" fish were pretty old for their size? If they were collected by the hatchery in early spring and held in tanks until June, they may not have grown as fast as normal. I suppose some could easily be a year old, and capable of spawining.

In a new pond in the south it is not uncommon for BG spawned in March to spawn in Sept or Oct.. They can grow to 4 inches and spawn over the summer.

If you think the BG are getting ahead of the LMB to much (which I doubt) then just stock a few 10 inch LMB early next spring or late winter. Then reduce the # of small LMB you stock by half.

I have trouble seeing how that could be a problem, unless one was managing for big bream.

i am sure about the size being less than 3". doubt that there were many over 2".
i feel that they were stunted. i havent seen the suppliers pond, but the place where i picked them up had a few concrete holding tanks. maybe 4'x10. he talks like he catches them that day and brings them to the tanks. i am not confident at all about the 20-40-40% ratio of fish. i have thrown the cast net several times and have never caught a fish that had any red on the ear. maybe the color comes at later age?

Hard for me to detect a red ear tab below 3" in length. Longer than that, it's pretty obvious IMO/IME.

A fish called 1 to 3" will be an average length of two inches. You may not have gotten any that were three inches.

Is there any pond in the watershed above yours that could overflow into your pond?

there is no pond upstream from me. i live inside an older subdivision and the spring actually heads about 1 block from the mouth of my pond.

I'm confused. (not unusual)

You said "huge watershed". Is this a spring?

If the spring runs very strong and even the least bit cloudy after a rain, it will have surface openings at least partially supplying it, and fish could enter the water from other ponds (even miles away) that way.......

it is fed by a spring that starts within my neighborhood.

when i referred to the huge watershed, i was actually talking about the volume of water that comes into my pond. my pond is small so just a small rain makes a huge difference in my pond. my immediate area is kinda hilly and i am at the beginning(higher points) of the terrain. no other streams or ponds can flow into my pond.

Early spawn by BG isn't always a problem - Sounds like a good problem to have as long as you want Bass in you fishery - Worst case - you will have a lot of young BG as forage.

It won't take long for for your stocked LMB to grow enough to happily exploit the food source - they should grow fast and happily.

No matter what happens - you need to manage a pond to get desired results as long as you have a pond, and care what's in it. Sometimes you will need to harvest more BG, sometimes BG within a slot (eg. 4-6") - and sometimes you need to thin or supplement your LMB population. This same philosophy will not change, you just need to establish your goals and make adjustments as you go.

Right now, it could be you need to boost your LMB population to make adequate use of the BG forage base - you need to look at you initial LMB stocking rates to make this determination.

FH

my pond is only a few months old, but my final goal is to have a bunch of nice size bg to catch and eat. i also would like to have enough bass to catch and eat from time to time. not expecting to grow trophy bass at all.

is this possible in a pond less than 1 acre or should i concentrate on bg only?

I had LMB and BG out of my 0.9 acre pond for dinner tonight. Feeding helps produce more/fatter fillets.

Your goals sound similar to mine.

Its my understanding to grow good sized Bluegill - its important to have an overabundant Bass population, that put a hurt on BG population from birth to 5". Those over abundant bass should not grow to large size, so it will be your responsibility to control the BG population over 5-6", and to monitor the Bass population and make adjustments as you see fit.

Also from what I've learned here - if you want... supplemental pellet feeding can help you get those BG over 6" up to a physical size and population size that you could not get otherwise.

Others here know far more than me, and their advice has been helpful to me. They may want to offer specific advice on population control that I cannot.

FH

Nice summation.