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.