Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations 1 million golden shiner fry in our pond!

Well, my pond partner and I have been talking about our need to build up our forage base and, today, we released a million golden shiner fry that he bought from Anderson Farms after seeing their ad in Pond Boss!

We are also beginning to believe that some of the Arkansas shiners that we've been using for bait have started to establish.

We're pretty excited that our bass and crappie are going to start putting on some weight!

Thanks for all the advice from this forum and the magazine!

Keep us posted on how things go. The info will help us all better understand how the GShiner fry method works. Stocking day is always fun.

NIce that should make one hell of a buffet for the bass and crappie

What part of the pond did you stock the fry? Shallows, deeper area, etc? Will help in deciding where it best for others. Any idea what species of shiner the Arkansas shiner you speak of is?

I think Lusk said it would be best to stock them in open water.

Where is not so important at that size but a plankton bloom is a must.

well, we talked with the folks at Anderson about the "where" and they said that it wouldn't matter because these little suckers will be all over the pond in less than 24 hours. But, we still stocked them in 4 different areas that had plenty of cover and flooded grass - pretty shallow and lots of places for them to hide.

We do have a slight plankton bloom.

Keep in mind that we have never seen our pond in April or May. I first set eyes on this pond last June and we bought the property a few months later. So, we don't even know what is "normal" in terms of plankton or algae blooms, here.

One thing that we noticed, and several of you on this forum also noted and pointed out, our fish have been skinny. Long and thin. Based on observations, we had not seen more than a couple of BG and virtually no other "minnows" or other small fish until this past month. We seem to have a few BG fry and at least one BG nest. We've had some early LMB spawners and have seen a few fry. Our crappie are full of eggs - we've been fishing the heck out of them trying to thin them out but, I'm sure that's basically futile.

Anyway, those Arkansas shiners are just "bait store minnows" that we've been using to catch crappie. We've been catching and cleaning (culling) a bunch of crappie and small LMB and finding a lot of those shiners in their bellies. That's what makes us think that those shiners may be reproducing but we can't really confirm.

We are such ROOKIES at this but the learning has been super fun!

Well, golden shiners are used almost exclusively in the bait market for use as crappie bait, so in all likelihood, your left over crappie bait is just bigger golden shiners particularly if they are coming from Arkansas...

Golden shiners spawn in shallow flooded grassy areas... It would makes sense the best place to place newly hatched fry for the highest survival rate would be shallow grassy areas??? Try to match nature as much as possible. Eric, maybe you can dig up a study on this topic, if one has even been done...

Have you ever set up a minnow trap in your pond? If not, you ought to give it a try. See what you catch... Try running a seine in the shallows as well. That will give you a good idea if you currently have any golden shiners in your pond and how well your BG and LMB spawn this year as been.

Then you can seine next year and compare... If you see a larger number of GSF, you know the 1 million fry took hold!

Keep hammering those crappie!

Thanks, CJB!

But, the ones we think are Arkansas shiners (cause that's what the guy in the bait shop and his supplier call them) are silver in color with a little bit of greenish tint on the top. I'm not sure if they are really Arkansas shiners but they look like the same fish when I look them up on the web.

The golden shiners are gold in color according to all the pictures I've seen so, I'm pretty sure that they aren't the same.

Everything we've seen come out of the fish's bellies have been either silver or they are sorta white like they've been partially digested.

I have a minnow trap but it's not a very good one and it really hasn't been working very well. We haven't caught anything in it after several tries and several different kinds of bait - bread, crackers, and cotton seed meal. Maybe I need a better trap.

The local bait shops here have crappie minnows (fatheads), bass minnows (3"-4" golden shiners) and at times they have pike minnows (stream chub suckers).

Here, the young golden shiners are silver in color up to about 5"-6", then they turn the gold color.

Monday the 4th is when Jones Fish said they'd be delivering my fish. I'll make sure that the camera is handy!

I gotta wonder if there's a regional difference in what the bait shops carry. But, I looked at a bunch of fish on the web and can't find anything that really looks just like what we've been fishing with.

OK, well, the fish like 'em so whatever it is, if they will breed and establish, then we've got a huge improvement in our forage base!

I was at Eagle's Nest Ranch this weekend and we stocked 6 boxes of fry into 5 different environments. I should have some hard data for you in a few months.
We stocked the following:
2 boxes into a 20 acre, fertile lake that already has: 23,000 coppernose bluegill fingerlings stocked six weeks ago; 30,000 threadfin shad stocked four weeks ago and 1,300 pounds of feed trained bass, 1.25 pound average,stocked two weeks ago. The lake has 5 Sweeney Feeders and two of the big feeders from Kansas to throw the Aquamax Largemouth pellets. We're feeding Aquamax 600 in the other five feeders. We plan to stock large hybrid stripers in a month.
One box went into a 125 acre lake, that is mostly balanced, but slightly bass overcrowded, with bass up to 11 pounds (observed), maybe larger. This lake has channel cat, largemouth bass, threadfin shad, gizzard shad, bluegill, coppernose bluegill, redear sunfish, gambusia, redbreast sunfish and black crappie. It's rumored to have flathead catfish, but I haven't seen one, yet and we've spent at least 15 hours electrofishing.
Two boxes went into a 10 acre lake, slightly overcrowded with bass, slightly fertile.
One box was split between a three acre pond with no fish in it and another pond that covers a quarter acre with no fish in it. Both smaller ponds have fairly clear water, will be fertilized when it quits raining there.
We'll see.
Two more boxes coming tomorrow, one into the 125 acre lake, one into a 6 acre fertile pond that has 200-300 threadfin shad in it. That pond was drawn down in the winter, fish harvested and the puddle was rotenoned. It's now about 2/3 refilled.
One note. Eagle's Nest ordered 8 boxes, but received only 6. No phone call. The ranch manager called, Anderson's acknowledged and said the other two boxes would be Fed-Exed Monday. One box had a fairly high mortality rate. Ranch manager will call tomorrow to see if they will replace it.

Golden shiners only turn golden when they are adult and spawning... Most other times of the year they are a silver color. Adults in spawning color turn golden with yellowish orange fins, rarely a slight red to them.

Here's an adult in non spawning colors:


If you catch a shiner over 6", its almost a guarantee its a golden shiner. As far as regional differences in bait fish go, if it's hatchery raised its gonna be a golden shiner or fathead minnow. Almost no other species is sold as bait fish which is hatchery raised. Other species are sometimes caught from the wild, such as spottail shiners and emerald shiners, but they do not seem to spawn in small ponds which are most commonly used in the hatchery business.

Some hatcheries put catching names on their fish, such as Arkansas shiner but I am betting its just your plain ole golden shiner.

Bob, I am very interested to hear the results of the multiple stockings. So many people are trying the fry route, it would be good to know what area of the pond to stock them in for the best survival rates.

We paid over $3,000 up front to guarantee we would have them and did not get a return email asking when receiving. Found out we missed first run that woudl haev worked awesoem with our schedule. I hope just honest mistake and hope to get some this week.

I will keep you guys posted when I find a moment. Last year no morts at all. We have confirmed establishment in new ponds no establishment in existing ponds with much hihger stocking densisites than Bob stocked above.

I wonder what the difference is between the fry actually born in the pond and the fry introduced to the pond? Why do they seem to do so poorly while ones naturally born in the pond seem to do much better? Perhaps the spawn coincides perfectly with the amount of zooplankton needed for the fry to survive and grow rapidly?

Do you think it may have something to do with them getting acclimated to the new environment? I don't have much experience with pond fish, but used to have quite a few home aquariums. When adding new fish, especially those that were shipped there was a big period of stress that the fish went thru during the shipping and even after being added to aquarium and this was even after a 30 minutes of acclimating time prior to adding to the aquarium. I wonder how much more sensitive fish that are <1inch are to the changes in environment, water chemistry, and the stresses of shipping.

I am a total newb and am not quite sure if there is any validity to my statements but just throwing it out there.

Interesting thought, I am betting smaller fry are more sensitive. Might be a good idea to be even more diligent when adding fry to a pond. When you're that small and there are already larger fish present who don't have that acclimation period to go through trying to eat you, the survival rate as to be awfully low. But even if 1 in 1000 survives to spawn, that's still 250 adult fish per box!

IME the smaller fish are when moved to a new BOW, the easier it is for them to adjust to the changed conditions and the higher the % of them that will thrive.

Just wondering iye is the survivor rate of say newly introduced fish that are small survival rates on par with offspring established fish population? Thatd be interesting to know but not quite sure if that's a stat that is readily and widely studied

Dr. Dave Willis ought to have a good idea on that.