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I have a pond in North Texas (between 3/4 - 1 acre). I posted yesterday about a fish I couldn't ID, because it didn't look like anything I had stocked. Well it turns out that it was a white crappie. This got me thinking about what the worst case scenario could be with the fish that have found their way into my pond.

I have stocked 20lbs FHM, 500 BG, 200 HBG, 100 RES, 100 CC, and 50 LMB (beginning with FHM last DEC and ending with LMB in May). We started fishing it the last couple of weeks to see how big they were getting. We have caught (in order from most to least) BH, CC, Carp, HBG, BG, GSF, LMB, white crappie (WC?).

My question is, given this info, what is the worst case scenario I can expect with these extra fish?

BH - I know they will muddy up the pond. Will they take over? Kill off my more desirable fish?

Carp - waste of biomass. Eat pellets that would otherwise fatten up my BG? Anything else?

GSF - Compete with the LMB for forage. Anything else?

WC - Possibility of overpopulating a small pond?

Are there any possible good outcomes to having these 4 fish in my pond ... other than they are fun to catch? Could they benefit my pond in any way? I can't nuke the pond, because I am downstream from some other ponds that will just re-infest mine with these fish every time we get a lot of rain. My biggest fear is that somehow this scenario will lead to the elimination of my desirable LMB/BG/CC fishery, and I'll be stuck with nothing but a mess of trash fish. Any suggestions on how to manage this?

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Keep a sharp eye on your largemouth population. Keep that strong and the bullheads, green sunfish and crappie populations should be ok. Still remove any you catch though. I’d be more concerned about the carp than any of the others, primarily because they can be difficult to catch and can obviously outgrow the prey size of your largemouth. What size largemouth were stocked? I might consider stocking a few larger bass to keep those unwanted species from getting ahead.

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The LMB were 2"-3" fingerlings. I went to a local place 2 weekends ago to see about buying some adult LMB to help with the BH population (b/c we saw a BIG swarm of little black BH), and they said it's too hot in the year now to stock any. I actually caught one of the LMB while reeling in a bobber/hook/worm ... he jumped on the hook right out from under some plants near the bank as I was bringing the worm in to check it. I've never heard of anything like that! So, at least the LMB are aggressive! That will be a good thing, b/c they have their work cut out for them!

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Following your pond threads with interest, and I second Josh's thoughts about LMB--early on in the life of your pond, you may want to run a little heavy in the LMB department, and your idea of adding a few larger LMB this year, perhaps later in the fall, sounds like a good idea. Down the road, when the BH,GSF,crappie are under control, you can always cull if becoming bass heavy.

WRT carp, if you continually work on them, in a pond your size you've got a good shot of controlling long term with persistant pressure. One thing you could try--each time you go to the pond, when you first arrive, try chumming an area with canned corn. After a few visits, chum, and then throw out a couple kernals on a hook, with no wt...over time, you can nuke a lot of carp this way. May have to vary the baits over time, but if you remove every carp you catch, and don't miss too many [let them swallow the hook!], you should be able to get ahead, especially when assisted by a hungry LMB population.
Put a bounty on each carp, and let your kids work on them.

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The carp can be somewhat controlled by fishing. The crappie are the big wild card.


It's not about the fish. It's about the pond. Take care of the pond and the fish will be fine. PB subscriber since before it was in color.

Without a sense of urgency, Nothing ever gets done.

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bh - controll their numbers so their food niche is good and grow some trophies, what strain of bh do you have? Yellow Black or brown, doubt its white

carp - you tube research how to fillet and cook, try younger ones- expensive fish sticks but better eating

Try and grow some trophy GSF or cross them with BG or RES for real bueaties, depending on spawing habitat and strain, they may not bee prolific enough to keep up with a strong bass pop.

WC - are they stunted, again the same, if the habbitat is limited, they might not spawn well, ( our local waters black crappie take well but white crappie are picky) and I think they taste better than walleye

look at texas state records- GSF is 11" and 1.3 lbs. hybrid is half that..... that is doable!!! Yellow BH maybe, Black BH is a respectable fish!! texas WC ans Carp are also respectable records.

I will bet members here though have grown GSF and HBG to those proportions in texas??

not saying anything different than any body else just wording it different.


Worst case Scinario - Make Lemonade - read the post ON Mutt Pond

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.ph...true#Post417988


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Little research shows texas has Pacu?? are these good eating?? Compete with tilapia?


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pellet fed trout could also be another record breaker with the right pond!! Deep with deep ariation... any thoughts on that??


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Deep meaning cooler water
ground temp at 65


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Better trash fish than trailer trash !! Ask Fatih, he's met me.


Do nature a favor, spay/neuter your pets and any weird friends or relatives.
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Yolk, so far, each of these fish have been caught on worms, but that action is beginning to slow down. I will definitely try corn on the carp.

Fish_mn, The BH have all been Yellow. I like the idea of embracing the GSF and trying to get some interesting crosses, and working on growing them as large as possible. My wife caught the only GSF out of this pond, and it fought unlike any of the other fish we have caught. This pond is 18' deep at the deepest point, but it gets HOTTTTT here, and I haven't started aerating yet, so I don't think the trout would make it.

My pond has slowly changed from about 12" of visibility down to only an inch or two b/c of all of the stirred up clay in the last couple of months. How will this affect my sight feeding fish (BG, LMB)? I assume it will do me no good to treat it b/c it will just get stirred back up as long as the BH and carp are in there? mad

In a +/- 1 acre pond with both WC and LMB, if unchecked, who wins the reproduction rate to come out on top? Do BH or BG factor into this from a reproduction rate or forage base stand point?

Last night, I had a large crane posted up by my feeder at feeding time. When I ran him off, he left a fat 1lb BH on the shore behind him. Maybe he's just trying to help me out, haha!

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Lucky crane!

In most ponds I have played with if lmb are left un checked they will become the most populated species.

Bg vs BH only my vote would be the BH taking over more so, the mouth gape thing.....


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Thanks for the info fishm_n! I've read a few other posts where people have had to deal with these unwanted fish. Crazy how they work their way into ponds where they aren't wanted!

The water/clay turbidity is the biggest disappointment in this case. I have only a couple of inches of visibility. That can't be good for the LMB/BG. Not to mention the overall aesthetics of the pond.

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Just an example of how fish can move into other BOS's.

I dug a very small pre-sediment pond (maybe 20'wide by 40' long with my backhoe to catch some sediment before it reaches my 1/10 acre sediment pond. No fish in it. It has about a 30' section of dry land covered in 3" rock that when it overflows the water runs into my sediment pond. Has probably a 4" differential in water level (full pool is 4" above full pool in sediment pond.

I throw in a hand full of FHM in this otherwise clean small pond. Plan was to get a hundred or so fingerling tilapia to grow up big enough to put them in my main pond. Put the tilapia in when the water temp got warm enough. So tilapia and FHM is all I stocked in this tiny pond.

We had a fairly large rain event, Nothing huge but enough for the water to pass through this pre-sediment pond into the sediment pond and on into the main pond. Just like it is supposed to. The water going out of the pre-sediment pond into the sediment pond maybe reached a maximum depth of 2 inches. Sediment pond has CNBG and RES that must have got off a late spawn last fall when I put fingerlings in.

I'm looking at this small pre-forage pond and notice what looks like something other than tilapia or FHM. Throw in a minnow trap and pull out a dozen or so CNBG. The 1" fingerlings that undoubtedly came from last fall spawn had swam the 30' against a pretty significant current up hill into this pre-sediment pond. It being such a small pond and not wanting to over crowd the tilapia with too much biomass and get a fish kill in this tiny pond, started trapping out the extra CNBG with an occasional RES. Trapped over 200 of these fingerling fish that had swam upstream. Got most of them. Had another rain event a few weeks later. Trapped a few hundred more 1-2" CNBG and RES and moved to the main pond. Did not care that a few were in this pond. Just wanted to keep the biomass from going crazy and having a fish kill as the tilipia were growing like crazy.

Point is to this long winded story, I was amazed at how many and how small of fish went against current up stream in pretty darn shallow water.

According to my older brother (about 75), he says LMB and bullheads will get in any pond that has an overflow into any nearby creek. Even if it is a seasonal creek, it will happen during floods. I don't know if he is correct, but I have seen bullheads crawl 20' back into the water when I threw them up on the old pond bank. Although I had a hard time fully agreeing with my brother, I can not dismiss what he says after seeing what gusto small fish have for swimming upstream to get to a new BOW. He claims BH can swim in an inch of water flow against current through standing grass. He may be right. He claimed he knew of a number of ponds that were never stocked that ended up with BH, GSF and LMB that way.

They sure seem to get into ponds somehow.

Last edited by snrub; 08/04/15 10:28 AM.

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Thanks for the info! It's funny, it never seems to be the desirable fish that make their way into ponds! Always the ones you don't want. I would much rather be posting great news about how a whole bunch of pure CNBG and a few big Camelot Bell LMB washed into my pond haha!

I wonder if I should be looking at the ponds downstream instead of upstream? Would it make sense to "screen off" my entrance and spillway to my pond, or would I be asking for trouble with clogs, and probably wouldn't keep anything out anyway?

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Not all should be considered doom and gloom.

A lot of us have stocked fish we didn't expect. In our local area of Northern Virginia and Northern West Virginia we've had a number of instances of problems with a particular dealer.

My first mis-fortunate/fortunate experience was when I thought my channel catfish were breeding in my pond. Long-time PB member CJBS looked at the photos and told me they weren't channel cats -- they were white catfish. (White catfish are actually bullheads.) That was a number of years ago, and I must say, I'm now glad to have them. Based on the size of the adults in their second year in the pond, I believe they were mixed in with a batch of channel cats I stocked the previous season. My other predator fish seem to keep them under control and we seem to have a nice moderate supply of them each season. They get to about 18 inches and 2-3 lbs. They don't seem to get hook shy, and they don't take over the pond like channel cats can when they get really big. Just today, I put four of them about 14-17 inches, that I've had in a cage for a while, into my put-and-take CC/HSB/HBG pond. If they do what they've done in the other pond, I'll be happy. It is also a pond I can drain and seine fairly easily if things get out of control.

I've got black crappie in one of my ponds. They were in the pond when we bought our place over 10 years ago. One of my neighbors proudly told me how her boys help stock that pond!!! mad She was also very upset when I wouldn't let their family fish in my ponds. The crappie have not been a problem. We maybe catch 10 per year. Most that we catch are in the 12-14 inch range. No matter what their size, they never get thrown back. This particular pond is managed for trophy bluegill, so it has lots of starved largemouth bass and a regular supply of hybrid striped bass.

Besides getting an overabundant supply of largemouth bass in your pond, think about getting some hybrid striped bass. Fifteen to twenty would be quite enough. They are extremely fun to have in a pond. They grow very fast. It is like a tsunami at feeding time. They take feed with some extreme action and acrobatics. They are also voracious predators with relatively small mouths, so they generally won't be eating your prized fish, like your fingerling bass. Yet, they can decimate populations of slow moving schools of bullhead fry. They fight so hard that they either have to be revived with oxygen or taken in for dinner. They are delicious.

Lastly, bullheads are a delicacy in many places, especially in the northern states like Michigan and parts of Wisconsin. They are easy to catch. They are delicious if properly handled and properly filleted. Here is a long and fun thread of how some Pond Boss members helped alleviate a bullhead problem for another Pond Boss member: Regional PB Gathering -- Somerset PA

Good luck,
Ken


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Originally Posted By: ShieTown
Thanks for the info! It's funny, it never seems to be the desirable fish that make their way into ponds! Always the ones you don't want. I would much rather be posting great news about how a whole bunch of pure CNBG and a few big Camelot Bell LMB washed into my pond haha!

I wonder if I should be looking at the ponds downstream instead of upstream? Would it make sense to "screen off" my entrance and spillway to my pond, or would I be asking for trouble with clogs, and probably wouldn't keep anything out anyway?


I think there was a guy on the sire that ended up with bells in his pond


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Cat, I really like the idea of adding HSB! I've been reading about them, and I think I will try to add some this fall!

Well, I finally got out to my pond with a cast net, and tried a few different spots along the bank. I've pulled out about 25 carp (mostly around my feeder at feeding time) and a handful of small BH. One thing that surprised me, is the number of small WC I caught in the net. This pond is about 1 acre, and I didn't stock them. Do I need to cull every WC I catch from this pond, along with the BH and carp? I also caught a lot of what I think are small BG, can anyone confirm based on the picture? I didn't catch any LMB, CC, or larger sizes of any fish. Are they not as vulnerable to cast nets, or maybe too far out/deep because of the heat?

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First one is a GSF (green sunfish) or possibly a hybrid with a lot of GSF genetics in it.

Lots of GSF pictures in this thread to compare to yours.

100% green sunfish

Last edited by snrub; 08/13/15 10:43 AM.

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Here is a picture of a BG fingerling beside a GSF fingerling for comparison caught in the same minnow trap at the same time.

BG and GSF fingerlings

A little hard to tell in this picture but once you have seen a few of each fingerling fish the large mouth size of the GSF sticks out like a sore thumb. Usually green bars on the cheeks below the eyes, white or reddish tips on the fins, a more longish (rather than tall like BG)shape and the translucent colored border on the ear tab (as opposed to a more solid color in a RES with no colored border on a BG) are other GSF giveaways in the ID process.

Hope this helps. Likely not what you wanted to hear though.

Last edited by snrub; 08/13/15 11:06 AM.

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Ouch ... you are correct, not what I wanted to hear. frown

I'm getting a little nervous, as the number of unwanted fish seems to FAR outweigh the number of wanted fish I am catching.

Any ideas on how to proceed with the WC? There were quite a few of them, all tiny.

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That is likely a question best answered by someone with a lot more experience than me. I can give you some things to think about though till you get some good advice.

The "pro's" I am going to bet, with all the "trash" fish you are starting out with, are going to say nuke the pond and start over with the fish you really want. Probably long run the best advice.

The other alternative is learn to live with what you have and manage around them. That is what I am doing in my old refurbished one acre pond. But I have the luxury of my main pond not having trash fish problems, so I am in a little better situation in that if my management with the old pond doesn't work out well, I still have a "good" pond to fish in.

Is your heart and goals set on specific fish species? If so a bunch of trash fish might never allow you to reach those goals. On the other hand, nuking a pond sets a person that much farther back in the day that suitable size fish are available for angling. I'm at about two and a half years in my main pond and the fishing is just getting pretty decent, at least with the BG and CC(LMB are hard to come by). I would hate the thought of nuking and starting over and waiting that long again.

Where I am fortunate to have both a good pond and a trash fish infested pond, I actually enjoy the old pond a lot. If I am having a hard time catching anything in the main pond, the old pond with the BH and GSF always has a fish willing to bite a hooked line.

If you do decide to kill all the existing fish, be sure you have an idea of how the trash fish got in to begin with. If you kill off everything, yet have fish coming in from a pond or creek above in the watershed, it will have been for naught. If that is the source of the fish, just as well learn to live with them and manage around them.

No good advice from me. Just some things to think about when you get good advice from the experts.

Last edited by snrub; 08/13/15 11:33 PM.

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I think if you could get a couple of big flathead catfish (over 15 pounds) they would clean out the carp and a lot of the WC.

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John, I've read a couple of threads on flathead catfish. I would love for them to wipe out the carp and WC (and bullheads). I'm worried that they may take everything else with them though. Any thoughts on how they would affect the CC/LMB/BG/HBG/RES populations?

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FHC have the largest mouth gap of any North American predator. IMHO, all the species you've listed are potential prey for a large FHC.


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