Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Yellow Perch ribbons yet?

I'm curious as to whether or not any of the northern pondmeisters have seen any ribbons yet?

I have not myself. I went fishing yesterday, and not even a bite. Today the switch was turned on. GSH in the shallows making a raucous,Yellow Perch feeding quite well.

The females are heavily laden with eggs, and the males.....well they are ready to go.

Caught 5 females6-8" long, and 3 males. I think the males are part Holstein! Milting bigtime!

We are way behind seasonally from last year. Ice out maybe 2 weeks. The last remnants of snow are gone today. Grass is not greening yet.

I did not take water temps yet, but guess it to be 40-45*F

Bill Cody saw some last week I think, but the YP that we seined out of Cecils pond yesterday were all still full of eggs and milt.

My main spawn has not started yet. I have seen and harvested only 5 egg ribbons from the "early birds" which were large old females due to the length and diameter of the ribbons. The next two weeks should be the main spawn. Apr 1-4 is supposed to be still cold in NW Ohio. If it still stays cold the YP spawn may extend to April 20?

Bill, in the YP that Cecil and I seined from his pond yesterday, there was only one that I thought could pop at any moment. The others looked like they still had a ways to go.

And that one was 13 3/4" long and probably 15" around!

Scott,

Bill's perch are more sexually active than mine.

Thanks for the info guys.

Esshup, (and any one else that cares to give their opinion.)

Forgive me if I start getting anally redundant here (no pun intended)

When you say "a ways to go" Are you making that judgement from the size of the fishes belly, or the looks of the area the eggs come out? ( I do not remember the scientific name, but hate to use the slang term on here as the childrens may be awake).

Some looked plumper than the others, and I dont know if it's due to merely egg numbers or egg size due to ripeness.

Do they quit feeding/biting as the call of love gets closer? Days/ hours?

It seems I recall Cody showing some photos here or in the magazine of the color change, and swelling in the area of egg departure.

I understand that monitoring and observing is the best teacher, but I'm afraid I'm going to be bobbing around in the Gulf of Mexico when the big moment happens. I'm looking to observe conditions up until I leave for sure. Would be cool if I had an idea how close it is to happening when I leave so I can have a better understanding if I come home to ribbons.

I'd like to see what Bill and Cecil have to say. In my opinion, (which could very well be totally wrong) the YP on the bottom is closer to dropping it's eggs than the one on top in the following picture. I think the closer they are to dropping eggs, the more pronounced the "step" is right in front of the anal fin.

YEAH!That's what I'm looking for! We'll wait and see what they say, but in the livestock world, there is most usually a time where "the baby drops", and creates a specific look in the abdomen, if you know what you're looking for.

Fantastic photo. I'm going to venture a guess that in the bottom photo, the eggs are reaching ripeness and positioning themselves to come out the birth canal.

Thanks Esshup!

Now I need to go catch some and compare to the photo. I believe a couple were like the bottom photo.

Agree with Scott on that the ovaries get larger and larger closer to the eggs coming out. I will say, and Scott observed it at my pond with a fish in the seine, that the urogenital opening gets swelled up and pinkish in color just before the female passes her eggs.

Yeah, I knew that the 'urogenital opening"....lol thanks Cecil!

esshup has the 'step feature' correct in my opinion, but the step is not always that pronounced as in the above photo for smaller 6"-8" YP females.

Good info guys, thanks, Ill try to see what mine look like in the next few days if I can catch some. will post any pics as well from here in West Central Ohio

Salmonid

I saw my first egg ribbon today in the holding pond I moved my females to. I'll be back with the water temp but it can't be more than the upper thirties.

I have been checking every night and I still haven't spotted any ribbons in my pond yet.

yeah, nothing yet at my place that i can see. roughly how deep are these ribbons, I have a half dozen ceders from 2-6 ft deep, would I see them near the surface or might they be deeper then I can see?

Salmonid

Yellow perch egg ribbons will be draped and hung among the twigs and branches. Some eggs may fall off the branches and lie on the bottom. If MarkB's pond does not have 2-3ft of visibility he will not see the egg ribbons. Sometimes deeper branches are in cooler water and eggs are laid when the deeper water is slightly warmer. If the pond has blue dye, it is my experience that these ponds tend to stay a little cooler compared to no dye ponds. Cooler water leads to latter egg laying.

I've got a couple egg skeins that are in very shallow water on the windward side of the pond. I'm talking <10" of water. I don't know if they are after hatch or before as I was too wrapped up in moving SMB from cage to cage.

Egg laying has commenced full blow for me now in the holding pond, my hatching cage, and some blew their eggs in the pond I drained and while moving them. After rotenoning the big pond I will have to treat with hydrated lime in the remaining water as some eggs could survive the rotenone.

For give me for my ignorance but when would one expect to see ribbons with water temperature? I was told some may lay eggs this year but next for sure with 4-7 inch stocked perch in November of last year.

If I can't see them will they be feeding on pellet feed when they are trained on it at the water temp of 42-45*F???? Don't want the feed to be just sinking to the bottom.

Again could be over analyzing things.

Cheers Don.

P.S. after topping up the pond I do not see the minnows we did before. It seems their food is deeper now with clean rock covered with new water.

Questions are good; that is one way we learn.
Egg laying for yellow perch is determined by water temperature and day length. Usually water temperature is more of a factor than day length, but it is sometimes variable depending on the strain of perch and water conditions. More southern adapted perch will lay eggs earlier compared to northern perch, and in these cases, it seems to be dependant a lot on temperature since day length is similar in AK & MO compared to OH, IN and Ontario. Perch in coolder Lake Erie lay eggs about 3-4 weeks later compared to perch egg laying in ponds in northern Ohio even though day length is the same for both areas.

It seems to me that it takes a certain amount of degree days after ice cover (39F 4C) for perch to finish egg development before eggs are 'ready' to be laid. There seems to always be a few very early and a few late spawners. However the major egg laying sessions occur mid way between the earlest and latest spawns. This probably evolved so all eggs are not a laid within a short time span to lengthen the hatch time to better take advantage of the formation of the developing plankton bloom which occurs above 50F-55F and feeds the perch fry.

Generally don't expect to see any perch eggs until the water temps get to and stabalize at 48F. Often eggs don't appear until water temps are 50F at one foot deep. The egg ribbons that I see first are always in water 8" to 16" deep and near shore among old plant stems or on shoreline brush-branches. Dark bottom areas will absorb more radiant heat and in cold water perch will seek these areas for laying eggs.

I don't see much perch feeding activity on surface pellets until the water is 50F(10C). This usually co-incides with early egg laying. Newly spent males & especially females have strong urges to start eating again and building fat reserves. Last night when water was 51F(10.6C) was the first that I saw some but not a lot of good surface feeding on pellet and sinking pellets were also fed. Many of the perch were still gravid. Prior to this (45F-48F - 7.2C-8.9C) about all pellet feeding activity was subsurface on soft sinking pellets which were readily eaten and they were very hesitant to surface feed. This was probably because the feeding fish were getting food subsurface, thus why surface feed?

Minnows will also probably stay deeper out of sight until the water gets near 50F, 10C. Sometimes the perch will feed fairly heavily on slow moving minnows (fatheads) during winter and significantly decrease the number of minnows especially those 1"-1.7" long, leaving mostly the larger breeders until most all the small ones are consumed.

Bill, spot on as usual. My pond hit 50°F on Friday and has been slowly creeping up since then.

I started to see YP surface feeding a few days before that, but now they're laying low because the trout have really put on the food bag. If the weather allows, I'll take pictures tomorrow.

My holding pond that is overloaded with bluegill and yellow perch is feeding really well. I will have to keep tabs on the ammonia however especially if the water temps keep climbing. None has shown up yet.

Hopefully it will hold off until they are ready to move. May have to crank up a surface aerator too. Otherwise I'll have to drain down and flow in fresh well water. Problem is I don't want to overflow it into my next pond inline my trout pond and introduce parasites. I went to a lot of trouble and expense to nuke the trout pond with PP last fall before I added the trout.

Great read. Our air system will show up today. Should I wait to put the system in an run it. This is a brand new pond we dug last spring. It is not even a year old yet. I am still getting a handle on where full pool wants to stay. I have filled the pond twice to where I would like to see it and it drops about 1" over night. The ground is still really really dry here. The ground frost is just out and the field tiles have just started to slow. This is not a good sign for a wet spring. I think the ground is really dry still and I would expect the banks to take a year or two to pack solid.

I guess you see this all the time with an over excited new pond owner. We did have a good plankton bloom mid summer in the little water we did have in the pond. We do have good growth of algae on the rock around the pond over winter. The current goal is a nice perch pond for the kids to enjoy fishing and cooking up a few. We know we should wait another year like not this fall but next fall before you try to take some to eat.

Still focusing on building a dock, waterfall, hydro, and air pump system. The fish will grow. Maybe we should be feeding them with pellets now by hand every other night? The minnows were active and feeding on the feed before we topped the pond up.

Cheers Don.

Don,

If the ground is dry, and the pond is still filling, then the soil will suck up some water to get saturated. It won't pack down any more than it was packed with the heavy equipement when the pond was dug tho, unless it's the frost heaving that is settling back down.

I'd put the aeration system in when it's convenient for you and get it fired up, using the slow start-up procedure.

Let the fish be your guide to the amount that you feed, but you have to feed every day, not every other day, and at the same time every day. Fish get on a schedule, and will be waiting for you to throw the food. Don't feed more than what they can consume in 15 minutes. Were the fish that were purchased feed trained?

Yes the fish were feed trained and the feed I have on hand is the same product. The problem I have is I have not seen any perch since the day we let them go in November of last year. No floaters nothing. The sun fish on the other hand.... ya they didn't winter so well. The water of the pond is very dark green blue from the heavy clay bottom so we are lucky to get say 4 feet of visibility. I will post up some pictures later today. If I just throw in some feed I really do not know if it is being consumed or not. The feed will float a bit but not long and then it slinks down. It is not floating feed but will for a bit. Could we be wasting our time and feed if we can't see the fish eating this up?

Ya I was not to sure about driving a sheep foot packer so close to the ponds edge. If she went into the pond nothing good would have come of that. So just the bulldozer that made the banks is all the traffic the banks seen for packing. Over the winter the water level stayed at the level of undisturbed dirt so anything above that is the banks. Trying to keep full pool 24"s above that area. Again like stated before we did dig this deeper adds more pressure to leaks. Any leaks seem to be in the new banks more than some where ells.

Cheers Don.

Since the perch are pellet trained wait until the water is 50F to feed sinking pellets. You might try fishing to catch just one so you know they are still there. Aerator can be started anytime. I don't start my aerator until the water is about 55F-65F. The warmer the water is above 50F the slower the start up run time should be. Example - at 65F-70F, first day 1 hr, second day 2hr, 3rd day 3-4 hr, etc.

Dark green blue hue was very likely from microscopic algae growth -phytoplankton utilizing nutrients leaching from the freshly exposed dirt.

I walked to the pond today I have ribbons! Not sure when it started as I was gone all week. Water clarity is pretty decent. Got a good look, as a couple of ribbons were in recenty submerged grass, while the majority were in slightly deeper water. They have spawned on the dam which lies north and sounth thus catching the brunt of the midday and afternoon sun. Wind has been from the northwest while I was gone, so that would be where the waves were breaking.

Congrats James!

CIGARS!! I'm going to the local tavern now!

I inadvertanly raked in a ribbon of YP eggs today, pass the cigars.

Did you put it back ?

Absolutely the YP ribbon went back in!

I hope I didn't mess up any of the eggs by pulling them in. I had no idea the ribbon was even there when I put the rake in the water. I made that my last rake for the critter quest once I saw the YP eggs come up and I was just getting started. The eggs were in 3ft+ of water and stuck to the vegetation.

The funny thing is I have been walking the pond every day looking for ribbons but had not seen any yet.

I'm really jealous of you . Still waiting on mine!!!

I found two yellow perch laying in the water this morning with that telltale beak strike just behind the head. One of them was in the process of releasing eggs. However in all objective fairness the heron may have struck the fish on the way out. That is, the fish may have been dying from spawning stress (I loose a few female perch every year due to this) and were floundering on the surface near the edge of the pond and the heron instinctively struck.

I have quickly put up a staked parameter around the pond though so he or she won't be able to get into the water or even be able to strike anything along the edge. I'll add pics tomorrow.

I went down today, and I have quite a few strands. I pulled some of the strands into shallower water, and hung them on submerged grass.That way I can monitor the whole process better.Looks like the fertility is high. Lots of pearly white eggs.

Alot easier to spot them now that I know what I'm looking for.

The water haS cooled enough now, that zero fish fed tonight. With these cooler water temps, what is lethal for the developing eggs? Does any one know? I'm sure 32, but are they fairly hardy?

LMAO....I'm nervous as a broody hen.

I wouldn't worry James. Lower water temps will just slow down the time it takes for them to hatch. It's when water temps quickly drop after they hatch and zooplankton have a hard time mutiplying -- due to lack of algae bloom issues-- when you have problems. By the time they hatch you're far enough south I doubt you'll have any issues.

Could a person pull the ribbons and place them into a large tank and hatch them out? Some blue die and feed them brine shrimp?

To much work?

Cheers Don.

Nope. They need very very small live feed until they can even fit brine shrimp in their mouths. If you want to go to the trouble of an algae culture feeding and producing zooplankton etc. etc. it can be done but not worth the trouble when you can get Mother nature to do it for you unless you are a commercial producer.

There are so many eggs from even one perch I wouldn't worry about survival if that is your concern.

For more details about how water temperature affects hatching time of yellow perch eggs see Pond Boss Magazine Mar-Apr 2010 for the article:
"TEMPERATURE AFFECTS ON YELLOW PERCH HATCHING" by Justin VanDeHey, Andy Jansen, and Dr. Dave Willis who describe yelow perch eggs, the spawn, dynamics of weather, and perch abundance. They provide some details of how water temperature affects egg hatch and fry survival.

Thanks Bill, I have that one.just dug it out. I dont think I ever read this issue

i thought about giving egg ribbons a try in my basement, but not until things have calmed down at my job and i'm back to somewhat normal work hours.. i've had greenwater cultures, and dapnia/rotifer cultures i've used to feeed a few minnow hatches, but i know for yp i'd have to go a bit bigger..
the temperature in my basement pond has gone up from the high 40's - when i lost a few tilapia - to the mid 60's... had yp eggs partially clogging up my drain lines the last couple nights/mornings, and 1 yp mort, a bloated female that didn't/couldn't release her eggs.. had one last year as well..
i put quite a few of the eggs in the crayfish tanks, i'm sure they'll eat them up... and the crayfish will end up in the pool anyways, so another "free" food input for the system (until i set something up to do it right, or at least try)

I see that every year as well. With about 350 large females in the big pond I get as many as a dozen or so every year that croak on me. Some years less. No emphirical evidence but I suspect a good many reabsorb their eggs too -- maybe because of the lack of males? I say this because I see a lot less eggs than I should. But who knows how many end up on the bottom out of sight?

All is not lost though. I will make a nice stringer mount one of these days. I freeze them up for later use.

When I went to collage I worked for my uncle. He would raise Angel fish for the home aquarium. We would ship 1500 about the size of a quarter each week. These fish were of the cichlid family. We would hatch their eggs out and feed them brine shrimp as their first feed. I would expect that their mouths would be much much smaller than perch fry.

Well aired water with a touch of blue die to keep the fry shaded. They would eat the brine shrimp till they could take in flake then pellet feed.

Thoughts?

Cheers Don.

Don,

For some reason it's not that easy for yellowvperch. Do a search for the Yellow Perch Culture manual.

I have no doubt they can be fed brine shrimp but not right away according to the texts.

Perch ribbon update.

Weather and temps here has been on a wild roller coaster ride.4/13 I saw my first perch ribbons. I continued seeing new ribbons for the next 3-4 days. Then the temperatures went south., Today I saw new ribbons. Some appeared to have been there 2-3 days, some look freshly laid. Water temp at the surface this afternoon was 58*F. That was with an air temp of 74 and a good SW breeze.

I read somewhere about the possibility of 2 spawning events. (I hope it wasnt in this thread, as I looked twice)

Yellow Perch are truly an interesting beast.

I moved about 100 mostly females from a holding pond back to the original pond today which had drained and is now refilled. Most had dropped their eggs but a few still had eggs in them.

About 200 more to go!

A few males caught today still were full of milt.

Good to know as that makes sexing of the fish easier. I had some questionable ones I did not restock but they did not produce milt either.

These didn't have fat bellies, but just handling them to remove the hook caused them to leak. They were 10"-11" long.

I have a decent way to sex them even without eggs or milt I'll have to show you. Found it in a recent publication.

Perch ribbons? I think I have some perch eggs in my pond but they don't look like a ribbon. Anyone have pictures of perch ribbons?

I'm quite interested too Loretta. I'm stocking 25 yellow perch in my pond tomorrow from Rainman. Never even seen this species other then on this forum. I would like to get some reproduction out of them. The HSB might prevent that though. My goal is the Missouri State record of 1 pound 11 oz. Only time will tell.

I dug and found this post from Cecil.
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=114182

Here is another one from Cecil.

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=211378

Thanks JKB. Man this forum is one heck of wealth of info.

Good pictures, thanks! That helps. My search query didn't find them but a lot of posts came up to search through. Those do look like ribbons, mine are similar looking but more like a rounded mass. The color's right and they are stuck to a stick. I'm sure mine are perch eggs, there's nothing else they could be really.

Could they be amphibian eggs?

I've never seen an amphibian in my pond except a frog and the frog eggs that I see are usually black.

Yellow perch eggs from a distance will resemble toilet paper in the water. They can be clumped or draped, ribbon like-elongate based on how they were deposited. Often they will be pulled off the structure where they are laid when the egg strand was not well intertwined with the structure. I have seen perch lay eggs on a bare bottom and then they lie in a clump but when distrubed will look like a round elongted ribbon. If eggs are in a tight jelly like mass they are usually amphibian. Perch eggs are not adhesive - sticky to the branch or weeds.

Mr. Bill Cody....Thanks for the great info!!! How deep will they lay eggs? I saw some last year (in my pond) in about 30" of water but none this year.

I know the perch are still there ( my kids are catching them). Two more questions, if you start harvesting perch out of your "farm pond", how big do you replace them with if you have no proof of reproduction? Or do the spawn use structure for a safe haven?

I've never caught a small perch in my pond...All original stockings (not complaining, I love'em). But I do not want to feed the LMB and the CC'S a perch dinner I want .

Well I'm going to have to investigate this more maybe get some pictures. I wouldn't describe them as a tight jelly like mass.
I walked by them today and they are no longer on the stick and fell to the bottom. Will they die?

Yesterday I put some branches in the pond and secured them with a cinder block because the dog will surely try to pull them out. After reading what you wrote I can see that my branches weren't sufficient. Thanks for the info.

hang-loose - perch have been known to lay eggs quite deep. They have been found up to 10ft deep usually 1-5ft.
Size of replacement or restocking perch will depend on the type and size of the predators present. Many ponds have largemouth bass so my rule is the restocker perch should be 1/2 the length of the bigger bass if you want most of the restocked perch to survive. With 16" bass that means YP should be at least 8" long. Actually a 16" LMB has a mouth gape of abt2.7" whereas a perch 8" has a body depth of 1.7". Thus stocking 8" perch may not be large enough to survive with 15"-16" LMB.

If a small pond has a normal population of LMbass it is not unusual to see few if any small yellow perch unless the pond is weedy. In larger ponds with weedbeds small perch can often survive to adult sizes.

Wow that is crazy cool. I was out at the pond with my wife the other day. Our surface water temp is sticking around 58-60f. I built up an area with pine bows apple tree bows, and some stumps to hold it all down. Long story long my wife and I wondered where the heck toilet paper could have came from to end up in our pond.

The next windy day the toilet paper was gone. I now expect that it was perch ribbons and the wave action knocked them off the pine bow they were on.

I didn't know what to look for and now with the above links I am sure my little perch are doing their very best to re produce. So so excited about all the new things I am learning at the ripe old age of 40.

Thanks Pond Boss!

A large percentage of the perch eggs in the ribbon that are lying on the bottom do not hatch due to suffocation from the egg strand being clumped together resulting in poor water circulation around and inside the egg strand. The egg ribbon or strand is hollow. Silt and organics settling on the eggs also contribute to poor hatching success.

P.S. just ordered a 2year to pond boss magazine.

Bill should I try to pick them up off the bottom or just let nature take it course? Brand new pond going through the second phytoplankton bloom with deep green water and little criders swimming in the water if scooped out in a white cup.

Cheers Don.

If you want lots of perch eggs to hatch then collect the egg masses lying on the bottom and drap or entangle them on the branches underwater. You can easily get tens of thousands of small perch fry from each egg strand.

Thanks Bill, I need more structure! One more question, what is the average life span of YP? I hope it is at least 5yrs+. If not, I'll be eating a lot of perch dinners this year .

Life span of yellow perch will depend on average water temperature, growth rate, and type of foods eaten. YP will live longer in cooler waters with slower growth. We are finding that fast growth and a high carbohydrate diet seems to shorten their life span. When regularly fed a high protein pellet diet in the midwest I see them usually living to 6 years to often 8 years old (total age). Stocker YP (2"-8") can be 1 - 2 yrs old when you buy them. When living on a natural diet they can sometimes live 10-13 yrs.

Bill,

I put a lot (LOTS) of minnows in my pond every spring and fall (kind of a natural diet )but those perch still love the pellets.

I'm actually leaning toward the fast growth rate, but if they're not reproducing, I have to restock sooner.

Is there a comparison of perch (ages) weights and lengths on a natural diet vs feed trained perch? I think I know who is going to win but I'm just trying to learn.

From my just visual observations I would say that pellet (high protein) fed perch during the summer fall season are 10% heavier with a bulkier body compared to non pellet eating perch. I can usually recognize a pellet eating and non-pellet eating perch from the same pond.

If you don't see small perch (4"-6") in the pond or catch any angling with worms then you should periodically restock based on how many you remove. Assume at least an annual 10%-15% mortality that you never see. I've caught 8.5" to 12" perch in my using 4" YP as bait. A 3"-4" YP struggling on a hook is an easy catch for a larger perch. I don't think 8"-12" YP regularly eat 3"+ YP. But I think big adult YP will eat some 1"-2" YP.

Wow!!! I've never even thought of using smaller perch as bait for larger perch. I'm not going to do it but I need to look at the bigger "picture".

One more thing, I love the look and size of pond raised perch compared to a lot of the ones we catch up at lake Erie! But thats why we raise them.