Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Succesfull walleye spawn in my pond???

I learned from this site that it was very unlikely walleye would spawn in a 3/4 acre pond without stream flow. This weekend I caught a dozen Walleye up to 22", caught down to 8", and had 2 follow bait to shore that looked 6 inches.
Walleye 8" are yearlings. I stocked walleye 2,3,and 4 years ago. Growth rates for all species are very good. Also caught some 10-13" crappie, 10-12" perch, and a 27" CC, I doubt the fish from 2 years ago stayed the same, or shrunk, LOL.
I did put gravel beds around shoreline, and get pretty steady wind, and wave action. Still a little surprised though. Hope it keeps happening.

The drive to reproduce is very strong in fish. If they can they will. They will often keep trying even under adverse conditions. Many things happen that are beyond our understanding. That is why we repeat often - it all depends. Congrats on your success !

Sometimes reproduction isn't the greatest thing. You now have no idea how many WE you have and managing them may become a challenge. You will have to treat them like LMB now and closely watch their Wr to make sure they aren't becoming too numerous and if so, remove some.

The gravel beds on the down wind side favor hatching of walleye eggs as long as the gravel beds stay clean. Your pond currently has some good conditions for WE recruitment. Survival of the WE fry and fingerlings is dependant on amount of dense cover and number of predators that eat fry and fingerling fish. Ponds with the best conditions will have some survial of the walleye egg hatch, but as noted this is rare. Walleye recruitment in ponds is most common in relatively new ponds. As the pond ages the shallow gravel areas often become more eutrophic and silt / organics accumulate in the gravel areas. This dramatically reduces the hatch rate of WE eggs, thus in several years you may not see recruitment of WE. In ponds with reproducing predators maintaining enough of the proper forage species and sizes becomes difficult when predators are too numerous. This assumes one wants the predators to grow fairly quickly to harvestable sizes. Also as the pond ages fish community balance changes toward more panfish the numerous hungry panfish will often eat the majority of the freshly laid WE eggs. Ponds and the fish community are constantly changing.

Hi Mr. Cody,
I placed the gravel on the downwind side early last year. I also remember the man that built my pond in 97 said I had some very strong springs filling the pond. I briefly saw them before it filled. I have dense cover, but it is tough for fingerlings to survive. I will keep everyone updated if I see anything new.
I need to start harvesting a few instead of releasing everything. Thanks everyone.

Dave, love to see some pics of your pond! Maybe I will toss some pea gravel in the downwind side of my pond to see what happens.

Please keep us posted!

If we could hone in on getting walleye to reproduce, a lot of us would be interested.

I will try to take a couple of pics this weekend, but I will have to figure out how to post them here. The only thing I did was add some small gravel beds. I`m thinking to add a little fresh gravel to each spot yearly. Like Bill said ponds get silty as they age, mine was also.

Once you take the pics, it helps to upload them to a picture hosting site like photobucket.

Once you have that done, we can easily guide you through posting pics.

Larger gravel and better the small to medium cobble sized stones work best for walleye spawning areas on the down wind shore. The smaller gravel tends to fill in with silt fairly rapidly unless you have a unique wave washed shoreline situation.

Bill what diameter gravel would be considered large? I think I used #1 crushed which I believe is 1". I noticed sunfish, and Bass clean the gravel beds not sure how. Won`t WE do the same? Thanks for the advice guys.

Coarse gravel of 1"-3" is okay for walleye egg laying but larger cobble of 3"-8" is even better. Walleye are scatter spawners and do no cleaning of the substrate prior to egg laying. Welleye rely on wave action and good water quality for clean spawning areas. Fresh laid eggs are not sticky prior to water hardening. Sunfish and bass have sticky eggs. Walleye eggs then drop into the cracks and crevices of the substrate where they are fairly protected from egg eating scavengers such a small fish, insects, and crayfish, etc. Strong wave action mixes fresh water down into the rock crevices to keep eggs aerated and silt and detritus washed off the eggs so the don't suffocate or get fungus before they hatch which takes relatively long in the cold water when the walleye spawn (42F-48F,maybe50F). Many waters where walleye are stocked do not have these good requirements for natural egg hatching and fry development utilizing proper water quality and good zooplankton.

Thanks for the info. I would have never guessed bigger rocks would be better. Of course forgot my camera this weekend. Caught a few walleye and released them. Kept 3 perch one was 13 1/2" biggest yet. Noticed a bunch of 1-2" fish kind of look like walleye. Still too small to tell.Been very cold in western NY. We had snow 5/24. Actually put heat on 6/4. Sunfish opened their spawning beds up.