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Wow, Todd...that's truly incredible!

Last edited by stickem'; 12/08/14 06:13 PM.

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UPDATE:

Todd has already filled you in, but here is a little more info.

I put two baited minnow traps out and in 36 hours I caught two 1" long CNBG and that is it. So I have no FHM and no small CNBG or RESF to speak of.

This is very easy to explain, because in four hours Saturday I caught, on artificial lures, over 80 LMB. This is in addition to the 20 or so I caught in 15 minutes Friday night. Everyone of these fish were within two inches of the same size. And when I quit fishing I was still catching them almost as good as I was when I started.

I have been an avid bass fisherman my whole life and an avid tournament fisherman for many years and I have never seen as thick of a bass population in a body of water.

Just to answer a few questions:

It is too far to throw fish from my fence to my pond.

The fish did not get into the pond via a high water situation. We have not had any high water or overflow since the pond was built.

Also these are Florida bass and not native.

When my fish were delivered from Overton's, I helped Walt get them from the trailer to my pond and I was the one that actually poured the fish out of a bucket into my pond. I am not saying that there is no way that a few bass could have made it in, but I don't think that there is any way that I poured hundreds of bass in without knowing it and that what would have had to happen to cause this problem.

The only other answer is that somehow at least a few adult fish got in there before the stocking of my baitfish and then had a very successful spawn.

My pond is visible from a fairly busy road which is a common route to and from Caddo Lake. Also my fence is not so secure that someone could not get in if they wanted to. My best guess right now is that either someone I know or a well intending neighbor coming home from a day of fishing decided to deposit their days catch in "that new pond to help out with my stocking"

I have been in contact with both Todd and Walt Overton and they have been more than helpful.

Thanks for all of the help guys,
Pat

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Boy if I didn't know better I would think it was my pond you guys were talking about. By this spring the juvies that were spawned will be about 10"+ . They do grow fast and eat a lot . Sorry this happened to you, I feel your pain.


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Pat W.

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Alright, nobody hate me for what I'm about to ask....I'm simply not familiar with how large fish deliveries are made. I absolutely understand how slim the odds are of that many LMB making it past the watchful eyes of Overton's crew, and ending up in OMC's order.

But just to cover all the bases, and try to eliminate all the possibilities, were there any LMB on the truck that made this delivery? For someone else's order maybe?

Not implying or suggesting anything went amiss at all, just wondering out loud.


"Forget pounds and ounces, I'm figuring displacement!"

If we accept that: MBG(+)FGSF(=)HBG(F1)
And we surmise that: BG(>)HBG(F1) while GSF(<)HBG(F1)
Would it hold true that: HBG(F1)(+)AM500(x)q.d.(=)1.5lbGRWT?
PB answer: It depends.
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Nobody will hate you man! Everybody has theories of possible scenarios.

If the Mommas and the Pappas show up during electro-shocking, then the current scenario fits. If they don't....back to square one?


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OMC

I think you nailed it with "well intentioned "neighbors, If they put in two large bass say 3-4lbs and they spawned then that is what you are catching now. The ones that were dumped into my pond spawned and I saw this spring bunches of 1" bass terrorizing the minnow population along the shoreline. They are now 10" and just now have eaten all the YOY everything. Good luck. Life is like that. You will win. Now that you know what you are up against.


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I think George Bush is at fault here.

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BIGGER and wif a reallllllly big mouth and appetite!


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Tony:

I think that even if a few LMB did happen to slip off the truck, they should have been fingerling size, and not adults. Overtons stocked the pond in May of this year with fingerling fish.

To me that equals adults that spawned early this year, and the YOY grew to the size that they are now. For fingerlings stocked in May to get large enough to spawn, and have their YOY get to the size that are being caught now is not possible.


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Last edited by JKB; 12/09/14 10:51 PM.
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To eat that many forage fish in the 7 months since stocking and be in their present body condition is what I am having trouble with. Those fish, IMO, haven't eaten in quite a few months.

Thus, I'm having trouble seeing a couple of bass pulling off a spawn that results in the sizes and numbers I'm seeing. 99% of the offspring would have been eaten immediately. The fish being within 2 inches of each other indicates to me bucket stocking soon after initial forage stocking. However, shocking is only sampling and there may be other sizes.

I agree on the pure Floridas not being a fish truck problem. Even the most casual observer would recognize the difference in bass and FHM. This was, IMO, intentional by some well meaning friend/neighbor. The same thing happened to me on a lesser scale and I know who did it and where the fish came from. I found 12 inch bass within 3 months of stocking fingerling bass. Luckily I had a strong forage base established and only a small # of bass were added.

Every scenario mentioned can be answered with a "Yeah but". Unless somebody comes up and admits it, you'll never know the real answer.

I would rotenone and start over. I see no way that adding new forage will be a viable decision with that many starving bass to eat them.

Last edited by Dave Davidson1; 12/09/14 06:05 AM.

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In the scenario I mentioned, I never envisioned the LMB coming off the truck as fingerlings. OMC stocked 50 lbs of FHM....say, 1.5" long? A LMB of the same size would, to someone in a hurry, or after dark, appear at least somewhat similar.

Florida bass, all the same approx. size? A spawn occurring in the pond from Fla. strain fish would account for that most certainly, but so would a batch of FHM sized LMB that were inadvertently released. They would all be the same approx. size, just about the size that are present matter-of-fact.

Again, I'm not suggesting this is what happened, only throwing another possibility out there. I don't even know if Overton's keeps LMB that size, or at that time of year.


"Forget pounds and ounces, I'm figuring displacement!"

If we accept that: MBG(+)FGSF(=)HBG(F1)
And we surmise that: BG(>)HBG(F1) while GSF(<)HBG(F1)
Would it hold true that: HBG(F1)(+)AM500(x)q.d.(=)1.5lbGRWT?
PB answer: It depends.
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OMC I think we may be close neighbors. Maybe we can meet up sometime. My thoughts are it would be possible that a neighbor might just drop some Caddo lake LMB into your new pond. I have a place on Caddo and have kept up with the lake stocking over the past 4 yrs. The State of Texas has stocked around 3,000,000 Florida fingerlings in the lake in this time frame and Florida's have been in the lake for many yrs now. So a pure Florida strain bass could come from the lake. But I can also see a mistake a stocking could also occur. We all make mistakes, and I could see where LMB fingerlings might be put on a truck by mistake. If you take someone like me, who stocked 4,000+ BG and 1,000+ RES along with FHM and Thredfin shad. Who looks at all those? Not me. No way I'm going to look at each and every fingerling. And when Overtons brought my forage out, some were in different containers and the fatheads and shiners came from an enclosed compartment on the truck and deposited directly into the pond. I will say that Walt, with Overtons knows his job. But I am also thinking that lmb fingerlings added to forage fish would have a lot to eat for until forage was mostly gone and that might put those bass fingerlings around the size of the lmb in the picture. People make mistakes !! It happens by the best of us.


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I also want to say I have full confidence in Todd and Walt. And I am set up and looking forward to spring deliveries from them. I am trying to work in a visit to their facilities asap.


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There is no way that hundreds of Florida LMB fingerlings could
be mistaken for FHM - unless you have never seen one before...
laugh






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Originally Posted By: TGW1
OMC I think we may be close neighbors. Maybe we can meet up sometime. My thoughts are it would be possible that a neighbor might just drop some Caddo lake LMB into your new pond. I have a place on Caddo and have kept up with the lake stocking over the past 4 yrs. The State of Texas has stocked around 3,000,000 Florida fingerlings in the lake in this time frame and Florida's have been in the lake for many yrs now. So a pure Florida strain bass could come from the lake. But I can also see a mistake a stocking could also occur. We all make mistakes, and I could see where LMB fingerlings might be put on a truck by mistake. If you take someone like me, who stocked 4,000+ BG and 1,000+ RES along with FHM and Thredfin shad. Who looks at all those? Not me. No way I'm going to look at each and every fingerling. And when Overtons brought my forage out, some were in different containers and the fatheads and shiners came from an enclosed compartment on the truck and deposited directly into the pond. I will say that Walt, with Overtons knows his job. But I am also thinking that lmb fingerlings added to forage fish would have a lot to eat for until forage was mostly gone and that might put those bass fingerlings around the size of the lmb in the picture. People make mistakes !! It happens by the best of us.


This post got me thinking about a really dumb "what if" scenario. Not knowing the area and location of this water, could some newbie fish delivery guy have dumped some Caddo lake bass into this pond thinking that it was a tributary of Caddo lake? Dumber things have happened?!

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Let's look at the math.

50lbs of FHM, say 250 minnows to the pound, for a total of approx 12,500 minnows, in a single compartment on the truck. Somehow, accidentally, 300 Florida strain LMB minnows the same size as the fatheads get mixed in with them, in that same tank.

So for every 41 FHM swimming around in that mass of fish, there is 1 Florida LMB minnow.

Certainly, comparing the fish one at a time would point out some obvious differences. But.....

Since we're exploring all the possibilities, lets' say the fish arrive at dusk, or even after dark, when visibility is not that great. TGW1 says that his FHM were all in the same tank, and were deposited directly into the pond. He didn't hand sort hundreds or thousands of FHM...in truth, I probably wouldn't either.

So, in this hypothetical scenario we have 300 LMB, the same size as the thousands of FHM, loose in a pond with no predators. I would think that the survival rate of the bass would be very high under these circumstances. They grow, and the other fish in the pond become forage for them. They eat and continue to grow fairly rapidly until the forage supply is exhausted, whereupon their growth suffers and they get skinny. All the same size....just skinny.

Once again, I'm not suggesting this is what happened. And while I don't have George's years of experience under my belt, I have learned to never say never, and always keep an open mind. When I'm convinced that something is impossible, is usually when I'm proven wrong.


"Forget pounds and ounces, I'm figuring displacement!"

If we accept that: MBG(+)FGSF(=)HBG(F1)
And we surmise that: BG(>)HBG(F1) while GSF(<)HBG(F1)
Would it hold true that: HBG(F1)(+)AM500(x)q.d.(=)1.5lbGRWT?
PB answer: It depends.
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George those are 2 good comparisons, but like TGW said above if your stocking 50bls of FH's you not looking at them. At least not all of them. Lets just say there are 200 FH's in one pound. That's 10,000 FHM's. Well 1 percent of all them FHM's is 100. So lets say 100 of them were LMB somehow. If your dumping in FHM's by the 1000 into your pond at dark thirty, you could very well miss 100. Not saying that's what happened. Just saying you could guess all day long. If you shock the place and you don't find any bigger LMB then what you have. Then you got to believe they all got in there at or around the same time frame somehow???? Just saying.

RC


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LOL Hey Spark great minds think alike!! Funny smile


The only difference between a rut and a Grave is the depth. So get up get out of that rut and get moving!! Time to work!!
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Sorry guys,I can't handle all the speculation - how many of you have actually seen fingerling pure Florida LMB, or held a bucket of them in your hands?
I have near 90 year old eyes, double vision and cataraacs and I could have told the difference at 29 paces..yeah, I have stocked hundreds of them and you can go to the bank on what Todd Overton tells you.

Please don't let this discussion lead to inference that could damage reputations.

George Glazener



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Original george #173 (22 June 2002)




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George, challenge and speculation has been the foundation of a great many new discoveries, as well as provided different interpretations of previously accepted norms. As was said earlier, we may never know the reason those fish are in there, unless someone steps up and announces "I did it". Until that day however, speculation is all we have.

And while I intend no harmful inference to Overton's, or anyone else for that matter, I still believe the possibility exists...highly unlikely and improbable, but certainly not impossible.

Keeping it quiet for fear of upsetting someone is fine, but if it were me, I would want to know how those fish got there, and would leave no stone unturned in my efforts to find out....if I didn't, who's to say that the next bucket might contain Crappie, or bullheads, or those funny sunfish with the large gape?

It's true that I tend to get stuck on a subject... I struggle with that. But leaving things unknown, in this case anyway, just carries too much risk in my opinion. Good ole' boy syndrome or not, I still think every option should be examined, BEFORE being dismissed. I don't think Overton's is at fault, and I'm certainly not saying otherwise here on the forum.

All possibilities. That's what I'm getting at.


"Forget pounds and ounces, I'm figuring displacement!"

If we accept that: MBG(+)FGSF(=)HBG(F1)
And we surmise that: BG(>)HBG(F1) while GSF(<)HBG(F1)
Would it hold true that: HBG(F1)(+)AM500(x)q.d.(=)1.5lbGRWT?
PB answer: It depends.
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Stay Tuned For Update from OMC!


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Yeah I agree with Spark. No fingers are being pointed were just saying it is possible out of 12,000 FHM's something could have happened? Then again maybe it did not. It is all speculation at this point for sure... Not in any way trying to downgrade anyone. stuff happens....

Like Spark though if it was my 5 acre pond that I was trying to make into the best pond it could be and then this happened to me I would want to try and figure out what the heck happened if anything to help the next guy.

And I love me some George but George you cant tell me if your dumping in buckets of FHM's at a time you could make out 100 percent of what they are. There is just no way specially if it's close to dark.

If that is what happened does that make Overton bad NO not at all, that makes them human.... You know what they say. "SH** happens sometimes.. Everyone makes mistakes if indeed it was a mistake??? Which we do not know.

RC

P.S. I can guarantee you this. If it can be proven that it was Overton. I am SURE they will admit and help the man take care of it! No doubt in my mind that's what makes a company a good company.

Last edited by RC51; 12/09/14 01:45 PM.

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