Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking Which shiner or minnow for winter time stocking

I likely will have one more chance this spring to build forage base. My local baitshop is willing to do wholesale by the gallon. He sells winter shiners for a few weeks yet. They look to me to be emerald shiners or silver shiners. He says that when temp goes up he switches to FHM. He has golden shiners and sucker minnows 6in. size too.

I have adult GSH so hoping they make babies and be self sustainable from now on in my pond but might throw another gallon in and hope the bigger ones will survive.

If silvery looking shiners are heat intolerant I plan to stock now through the ice. Not sure about summer pond temps and this type of minnow? The bait shop man said he had to keep ice in his holding tank and change it twice a day to keep these silvery looking minnows alive.

Will silver or emerald shiners survive or multiply? Any advantage to adding suckers? I assume they are white suckers but not sure.


Later when he can get FHM I'll put more in as I think I didn't have enough spawning structure or the perch hammered them all.

SW Mi, 1/4 acre pond, res perch FHM GSH crayfish and goldfish only.

CC, I'm sure you've posted before but how deep is your pond and do you aerate? Also how much vegetation is there?

CC,

I see your tag line says your only predator is YP currently. Do you plan on stocking any other species? That might help you decide which one to stock. FWIW I've read that emeralds are difficult to get to spawn in ponds.

I found this in an old thread that you may be interested in....

I have SFS in my pond that reproduce fairly well. No flowing water except what is circulated by aeration. BNM are also a good hardy forage that reproduce the same (or nearly) as FH. I'm not up on the ban of selling fish over State lines.
I think Bill D has a source for BNM. If so maybe he can share contact info.

The emerald shiner will not spawn in a pond. The only member that claims to have emerald shiner spawning is DonoBB. He has a waterfalls that produces strong current. We have verified shiner spawn success of Dono's shiners but as I recall the striped shiner spawned but I don't think I saw pictures of the emerald shiner producing offspring. DonoBB may provide pictures to this thread of offspring of his shiners.

The pond has a dual head vertex aerator in the middle at 8' deep or so. I run it during the day when water is starting to warm up, and at night to try to keep the water more cool when the hot weather comes. It does pretty good at keeping things mixed in the middle but you can see the ripples die down pretty good by the time you get to the edges of the pond.

I HAD vegetation till the crayfish took it out. I also had very muddy water this past year due to goldfish/crayfish. The soilfloc has stabilized the mud so that the crayfish don't seem to be stirring it up anymore. I'm curious to see if my clarity stays good this year due to crayfish being unable to dig a lot in the top soilflocced layer of clay.

This year if I have clear water I might get more vegetation which at this point would be OK.

If emerald shiners can't spawn in my pond then I guess I would be less inclined to put them in at all. Then I'd probably put in a double batch of larger sized FHM and some more GSH.

I have 100 perch, supposedly about 50 RES and 25 LES but no spawn of any type of any sunfish has been observed in the past two springs. Big hopes on this spring!

I hope to put in a few SMB to control crayfish, control YOY perch and control RES. Once they are in I really can't easily restore forage.

I'd like to put in a few HSB but need to find someone to supply them to me via overnight shipping or a road trip from a nearby state from a private party.

I don't have enough running water for emerald shiners it sounds to me...

I'd like to find some BNM. I also plan to go to the local streams and see what kind of minnows I can find there.

I don't think the aeriators will make enough current for a spawn of silver emerald shiner

IMO stay away from suckers - most species grow large per Cody in the past and I don't believe will serve your purposes as forage as they'll quickly outgrow gape capability. GSH and supplemental feeding help keep my predator species over 100 WR and have for years - GSH have built a self sustaining population I merely nudge with supplemental stockings every Spring. I have no experience with alternate minnow or shiner species, but I've tried to establish them with no success. I know it can be done - Bill and Travis recommend Spotfin shiner and Bluntnose minnows. Availability is scarce - that's our primary issue.

Set your crayfish traps ASAP and keep them deployed and check them every few days. You should be able to collect 6-12 per trap - it adds up, I removed 500 last year with minimal effort. As your SMB and YP grow, they will help your culling efforts and your water clarity should stabilize.

TJ, Thanks for the advice!

can you explain why you add supplemental GSH every spring? Roughly how many and do you source from wild source or bait shop? Other sources?

I may just wait a few weeks and get a bag of GSH and FHM to give one more supplemental push to the forage.

You say set crayfish traps ASAP? I still have 6" of ice and now a foot of wet sloppy stuff on the ice. 50s this weekend so the snow should melt back some. You mean as soon as ice out put the traps in?

Why would we remove crayfish? Aren't they going to be good for my LMB or SMB when I eventually put them in? Or you are thinking the fish will only eat a few and I still may have a hundred or more waiting?

I only had a few crayfish for starters (maybe 30 adults) and I was hoping the perch would hammer the young and keep them in check while my 'broodstock' adults would keep reproducing?

I have had trouble trapping the adult crayfish. Maybe I need to try different traps or different baits. I know a left over BG filet carcase seems to do well when I'm at other lakes, but I'm not planning to filet anything at my pond for a while yet...

Whenever you have ample crayfish bait, freeze it in plastic bags for later use. Money is better spent on GSH or other forage that will reproduce instead of emeralds. Start trapping crays when water gets 45-50F. High density of crayfish will definitely cloud the water but you won't have algae nor plant issues. If you have trouble catching crays you maybe don't really have abundant crayfish.

Suckers are harder to spawn in a pond than emerald shiners. Suckers are primarily stream spawners and emeralds will spawn in lakes with the right conditions.

My bad, I thought you were concerned with water clarity issues, that's why I recommended crayfish trapping when conditions allow. Your clarity has likely improved over winter because crays are not nearly as active now, water has settled and cleared up, and you're still experiencing the floc from the linear polymer. When I trapped 500-750 crays last year clarity improved from 10" to 30"+. That's right where I wanted it. Every scenario different, if you are too turbid, just recommending crayfish trapping. We haven't talked in a few months maybe I am confusing our conversation RE turbidity. If so, sorry!

I have had emerald shiners spawn in our pond. Not many because the few small ones we did catch this spring were few and far between. The minnows that we have in our pond that are doing extremely well is the common shiner. There could be some emerald shiners in the small young stuff that was too small to catch in a trap this fall. Will know this spring as they become bigger.

I have never seen a pond ever anywhere with as many minnows as I seen this fall around our perch pond. I am betting they are common shiners.

I personally have not had any luck with the fat heads. They were in our pond for two years max and are now really non existent. The faster shiners are really the way to go in my eyes.

In time it will show if shiners are the way to go in our pond. I understand their breeding can be hit or miss. One year millions the next only a few.

I have found that our crayfish will climb out of the trap if left in more than a day or if the bait is gone. We can catch 3-4 per night in our minnow traps. Check under rocks around the shore in the spring.

Don't be worried about having poor visibility in the water. This will help in the long run with minnow population as well as crayfish population. Predators cant catch what they cant see.

Cheers Don.

I agree, turbidity has benefits and disadvantages. If a predator cannot locate forage, they cannot eat - they cannot grow. If that's the purpose of your forage base - to feed and grow predators, turbidity inhibits this function. Turbidity also limits growth of macrophytes whose role is essential in pond ecosystem with O2 production, habitat for fish, and promoting invertebrate production which also provides forage. Degree of turbidity is key component - 18" visibility is vastly better than 6". I haven't encountered a productive fishery in highly turbid water [under 6" visibility] except for catfish/carp.