Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose HBG Out Of Control

I have a 1/2 acre East TX pond that I stocked last year as a CC,HBG pond. Initial stocking was 100 CC,100 HBG and a few lbs of FHM. After 1 year my HBG have taken over. I have placed a minnow trap in the pond and have removed no less than 300 HBG of all sizes with no end in site. Obviously I need a predator. I was thinking 5-10 same sex LMB vs 2-3 blue cats but am open to suggestions. I was under the HBG were not prolific reproducers.

Are you sure they are HBG? Can you post photos of them and their offspring?

10 same sex bass would work well to begin cleaning up the mess. Just make sure they are all the same sex and for your purposes, I would pick males.

It is possible that you could have quite a few hybrid bluegill babies if there are minimal predators. Example: with 100 HBG, let's assume that you have 90% males, which leaves about 10 female HBG. Young female HBG of 5" would have maybe 3000 - 6000 eggs times 10 females gives 30000 to 60000 eggs. Note -I could not find a lot of information about how many eggs a young, female hybrid bluegill will have. A 5" female greenie and bluegill will have an average of 6000-11000 eggs. Since these are hybrids lets say there is a low 15% hatch rate for the eggs which equals 4500 to 9000 fry for all 10 females. Without predation lets assume a 40% fry survival rate to fingerling size 1"-2" which equals 1800 to 3600 F2 hybrid bluegill. This is maybe why you are seeing quite a few offspring from your HBG with minimal predation.

FF,

You present a scary possibility. I built a somewhat smaller "put-and-take" pond a little over a year ago and stocked it with 150 HBG, 50 CC, and several pounds of rosey-reds/fatheads. Plus, I included two koi and 50 redeared sunfish (RES).

I was hoping that the CC would take care of any HBG/RES offspring. My plan was to add some hybrid striped bass (HSB) last fall, but I couldn't get any. If nothing else, I do plan to introduce a bunch of rainbow trout this fall.

I do know that the fatheads/rosey-reds have survived and thrived extremely well. They are just thick in the water when the feeder goes off -- but so are the HBG, which are quite aggressive.

Keep us posted. It will be interesting to see what you do, as I may have to follow right behind you.

Ken

fishfrank - It would be helpful if you could get a good close up picture of these young HBG for us to verify the correct name. You can post a picture, post a link to the picture or email it to a PBoss moderator and he will get it posted.

I will get some pics posted soon. The CC are averaging about 15 inches and are obviously eating mostly pellets. My FHM have spawned several times and some are very large so I dont think they are really touching those either. I'm going to continue to trap trap trap with the minnow trap until I get a reliable predator established. Probably go the same sex LMB route.

Just make sure you are 100% confident in their sex if you go the LMB route. Keep in mind though that they will focus heavily on your FHM first until they become less abundant. Why chase after spiny round fish when you can eat slow, thin, spine free snacks?

Here's a sample from the trap.

I'll try to catch an adult and post it. To me the adults are obviously HBG.

To me, it looks like there is some RES in the gene pool somewhere by the red dot on the ear tab on a few fish.

Many of them are stunted - look at the large eye.

I take it this pond is more than a year old? Do you know what fish were in there before you stocked it last year?

Actually the original pond was about 50 years old. During the drought 2 years ago it went bone dry. I basically had it rebuilt. It was dug out to 12 ft depth and enlarged slightly. So I started with a fresh slate. But one peculiar thing did happen. I had several tires along the bank to prevent erosion while it filled and several washed into the pond floating around. I pulled one out and there was about about a four inch fish of some sort that wiggled its way out before i got a good look at it. It appeared to be a sunfish of some kind (prob GSF). This was at half pool. My run off is up a hill coming from my house about 10 acres up with no pond anywhere upstream. And this was before stocking and about six months after the renovation.

Fish do love to swim upstream durring high water events. just a thought.

I'm not an expert, but those do not look like pure hbg to me

If the pond was completely dry before you restocked, and there is no source of contamination from another BOW of any kind, then I would wonder if someone "helped" you out with your fish stocking plans..

Where did you get the HBG you restocked with, and what size were they when you put them in? The fish in your photos appear to me to be older, stunted individuals.

From just the pictures the fish from the trapping are hybrids of some sort. And yes, they are stunted (food shortage) due to the size of eye in relation to the length of the fish. It is possible that the some or part of the stocking from the truck were not pure F1 first generation bluegill. Some less reputable hatcheries will make their own HBG and then supposedly high quality hybrid bluegill start to get diluted by using parents that are not completely pure strain BG or GSF. Best HBG are produced using male BG and female GSF. Other crosses of female BG and male GSF or using other hybrids (unpure or diluted parental stock) as parents usually result in substandard hybrids. Genetic make-up of parent species is very important in producing quality HBG. These diluted strains of hybrids will have more females per every 100 fish compared to proper high quality F1 hybrids. Diluted strains of hybrids may also lack good hybrid vigor. We as consumers rarely know what the quality is of the HBG. Yes the fingerlings are HBG, but at what quality, what type and purity of parents were used, how fish "clean" was the brood pond?????? Many variables can contribute to the quality of HBG fingerlings. All that to say this: Maybe your original stocker hybrid bluegill were not the best quality, thus your over population problems?

Good points. I'm on a mission to eliminate them now. Lesson learned. There is no way my wife will let me retonene the pond and start over. So I will use the adult bass, trapping and fishing to do the best I can. Supose I get control of them, would I be able to start over with reg bluegill or would I be forever cursed with these guys I have now?

Supposedly if you stock pure strain BG into a pond with HBG eventually the pure bluegill become the dominant panfish of the two types. However expect to see some type of HBG at scarse, rare, or occassional density as the fishery ages. I have never done this, so I have no first hand experience with this technique. Other members may have good advice. I've just read about it here on the forum. Recent research that I read indicated that HBG have poor success mating with pure strain BG and produce few if any offspring (Reproductive Isolation Between a Hybrid Sunfish and Its Parental Species. by Brunson & Robinette. 1987. Prog.Fish.Culturist 49:(4) 296-298). The authors did mention that backcrossing success of the HBG could vary in different parts of the US due to origin and genetic history of the parental stock.

So if you can get the HBG significantly reduced and then stock some larger BG you should see improvement. Remember - stocker LMB need to be at least 3 times longer than the HBG you expect them to eat. Do some length measuring of the HBG that you are trapping and catching angling for proper sizes of LMB to stock. I would keep removing HBG until trapping and angling catches only the rare HBG. Then get your stocker LMB. Now is the time to locate the stocker LMB so you know where to go when the time comes. Others may advise about number of larger bass to add in a 1/2 acre. I think that once you get your HBG noticably low, if you initially stock 20 to 30 LMB, that should be enough to maintain a low number of HBG. When you stock the LMB it would be a good time to also add the adult pure strain BG. You may have to look pretty hard to find the proper sizes of stocker LMB and BG. Some Texans here may be able to advise you where to get larger bass in your region.
Note - As an idea of how many F2 HBG you could have in your 1/2 acre pond, the study that I noted above found that in ponds with HBG and no bass there were an average of 866 F2 hybrids per acre.

I stocked adult HBG and BG 5 years ago-not really a long term study, but at this point the BG are dramatically more prevalent, in what appears to be pure form, than the HBG. I still catch some fish that appear to be fairly pure [if such can be used to describe a hybrid] HBG in different year classes, but very few compared to the BG. I haven't caught any that appear to be reverting to predominantly greenie phenotypes.

At least based on my experience, I think that if you have a good predator population, coupled with a good breeding BG population, you'll be OK.

YolkSac - thanks for the great testimony. Any others????

Bill:

I put 100 HBG in my pond. After 2 years I never caught another one.

I have stocked ponds that had nothing but GSF in them with adult BG. The first few years I saw a fair number of naturally produce HBG. By 6 years in, the GSF had gone from thousands to rare, the HBG were nearly gone as well and the ponds were almost all pure BG. These stocking also included the addition of adult LMB as well.

Travis, that is also my experience. My forage pond has some GSF. I don't hesitate to stock them.

Wow that's very encouraging to hear. Guess I have a plan now.

Finally got some pics of the bigger HBG

boy the big ones look pretty fat and healthy, they must have food.