Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations How many fry hatch?

Hey everyone. We have a new 3.75 acre pond. We did some stocking last fall....1000 res. This spring we added 30# of fhm. We wanted some local genetics from favorite lakes around the area. We did a few days of bucket stocking pre spawn bluegill. Well, long story short, we have babies. I had a few questions?

1. How many babies on average does a female have per spawn?

2. Is fall soon enough to stock predators?

3. With all these babies how soon can I start feeding them......what size is an average size to start feeding?

Thanks all

Travis

1. I have seen many different numbers thrown out, depending on where the study was done but I'll break it down with a guess, expect about 10,000-20,000 fry to be produced per female during a spawning season.

2. Depends on your goals, but I would recommend getting the bass stocked this fall. So, with that said what are the goals for this pond?

3. I'll leave this up to the artificial feeding program experts.

Good luck, I hope your bucket stocking program didn't cause any issues such as introducing any unwanted diseases, species or other nasties...

How many adult BG did you bucket stock?

What are the goals ? If LMB are in the pic then stock them soon. Depending on the size you will stock then by fall at the latest at your location.

You can start feeding now with GFC in small amounts. The bigger BG and FH will eat it and the fry will learn to also.

I'm going to disagree with you Travis but must qualify my posting by admitting that I'm not familiar enough with Northern stocking(s).

It is my belief that Fall stocking of predators does very little good since they will be mostly dormant during the winter. I would think that Iowa would see some mortalities due to extreme(well, extreme to me) cold and icing over.

I'm going to disagree with you Travis and Eric but must qualify my posting by admitting that I'm not familiar enough with Northern stocking(s).

It is my belief that Fall stocking of predators does very little good since they will be mostly dormant during the winter. I would think that Iowa would see some mortalities due to extreme(well, extreme to me) cold and icing over.

I hear you DD1. LMB in most cases go on a feeding binge in fall as the water starts to cool and DO levels increase. That is the event I would be trying for in this case (early to late fall depending on location) with water temps going from low 70s to 60s down to 50 F.

Eric, I like the idea of waiting until Spring. It gives the forage more time to reproduce and starts the predators out with a warm water appetite.

However, I'm very cautious about giving advice re the stocking of bass too late since Northern BG seem to overrun the environment. That's why I qualified my statement. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around an over population of BG in a bass pond.

DD1 said "I'm still trying to wrap my brain around an over population of BG in a bass pond."

Its not a pretty sight. That is exactly what I am trying to avoid in the situation described. Much more likely up north but happens here as well. The problem is lots of little BG but worse as a result the LMB won't try to spawn which compounds the problem.

It has to be tough for someone familiar with southern ponds to believe BG can stunt in a pond. It happens, quite regularly and even without over harvesting of the LMB. Usually it happens in my opinion because of the improper initial stocking where the BG are given too big a head start on the LMB. The building of BG forage isn't needed in a northern pond. Building up the minnows and shiners first, I agree... The BG should go in with or my preference after the bass.

As far as fall stockings, I guess the definition of fall should be made. I would define a fall stocking anything from Sept on. When water temps first start to cool down in early September, that is a good time to get the bass in. You're still gonna have a decent amount of growth particular for bass going into a brand new body of water with unlimited food supplies.

Yeah, it is an odd deal to me. In Texas, I have never seen an over abundance of forage but have heard of it. I have never seen either GSF or bullheads over run a pond unless the pond was small and the bass over harvested.

Lots easier to stock properly and manage than correct.

Trust me Dave I would say "most" of the ponds and lakes in this area have a bluegill stunting/over abbundance issue.. If you ever wanna catch 6-700 bluegill in a few hours I know a spot, bad thing is there see through and 4" long..

Thanks for all the replies. Fall stocking would be September. We will be stocking lmb, hsb, walleyed at 6". As far as stocking goes we can't get the bass until fall. Spring was a mess of cold and wet up here and the pond was a mess. We didn't get bass in the spring since we had nothing for forage.

Our goal is large healthy panfish. Bass will be for population control. We love big gills and res. Walleye and hsb are a bonus fish. We won't have big numbers. Our bass don't grow as fast up here so it will be a lot of bass to keep the panfish in check. Culling bass at 14". That's our plan. The bass should feed pretty heavy into late October. Not sure how much they can eat in a couple of months? We could always trap and seine if we get to big of a jump from the gills.

This is going to get crazy!

Travis

Oh, side note. Another reason we bucket stocked is the fact that our only local hatchery only does hbg. No regular bg. They won't stock them. It would be tough going with just hybrids. just wanted to clear that up a bit. Bucket stocking was a risk we felt we had to take. We had die off over a month from fish we stocked and it sucked. But we see a good number of fish and a handful spawned in one area of the pond.

Travis

I wish you had called me, I could have delivered or shipped you plenty of BG...I stocked a couple lakes in Fairfax and Fairfield in the spring of 2010.

If large panfish is your goal, I'd strongly consider stocking more advanced sized LMB. I'd look for LMB over 8" and at least 6". If 8" and over go with 75/acre.

Dave, I bucket stocked a 4' deep, .25 acre mud hole on my land with some GSF and then added 20# of FH in April of '04. Oct. '05 I added 10 6" LMB. When I drined the "pond" after the March '06 with 1" of ice still on it, to start enlarging the pond, all 10 LMB were recovered and ranged from 8-10+". (Maybe 6 straight weeks total under ice as thick as 5" that winter)


Yes Jhap, I intentionally stocked a pond of mine with GSF....I knew they would be gone soon.


I would say that is pretty decent winter growth.

You have tougher fish than we do. How many fatheads and GSF were left?

Dave just for my own knowledge where is the line(Geographicly speaking) between "Northern" and "Southern" stockings.

It's my opinion there is no exact line. If FL or F1 bass can live in your area, you are definitely "south". Then there is a median area that in the east where I live would be south of the Mason-Dixon line but north of where FL bass can live. Anything north of the Mason-Dixon line is "north". Where I am in northern VA is that in between area.

If your going for big gills, I'd leave the HSB out they'll directly impact your pellet intake of the gills..

Option is you can always stock HSB at lower numbers later if needed or desired. Later stockings of HSB should be 7"-10" for best survival rates.

Probably just stocking 100 hsb. 5-7" fish this fall. Not a lot. I want to see how they do. We can always stock more next year if we don't like the balance. Not sure about the walleye and bass numbers yet. Bass will be around 4-6" this fall. I'm thinking about 100 per acre. Probably do just 100 walleye and see how they do. Again main focus will be the panfish. I'd like to see perch as well but I'm not sure how they would do in the mix? I would try to get pellet trained. They would also be a bonus fish if we added them. I don't want to over do things but I would like to see multi species at nice sizes for table fair....and big panfish for sport and trophy.

Travis

The line also depends on altitude. The higher you are, the colder it gets.

I don't know. When I was a Kid in Muleshoe Texas, we got annual blizzards; sometimes mixed with sand storms. Muleshoe is about 100 miles North of Lubbock.

With the changing weather patterns that I've seen over my lifetime(68 years) I'm not sure just where the obvious lines are. The Mason Dixon line used to be accepted but that wasn't really true.

We used to get drenching rains from hurricanes and tropical storms that came inland from the Gulf of Mexico. That hasn't happened in years.