Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations planning a PB member Yellow Perch experiment

the first year my ribbons were not visible, not supervised, and certainly not draped over branches and they hatched just fine

The second year I removed as many as I could and the few I left laying on the leaves in the bottom hatched just fine based on my prodigious number of YOY perch.

i wouldn't have stressed about winding them into branches or tossing the egg ribbons. Just lay them on the leaves close to shore where you can watch them hatch

No ribbons yet, BUT I just rescued at least 50 4-5" YP from below my exit pipe. I only added 10 SMB and am thinking adding another 10 now cannot hurt. Advice is welcome.

Hearing no decent, I ordered 10 more SMB.

IMO good move. With that many 4 to 5 inch YP just at the pipe, you can probably use the extra predators. Heck, I would probably stock some non-reproducing predator like 10 WE in there as well!

I have been thinking about that. I want big SMB but also reproduction. If the YP take out too many SMB fry, I may need another more efficient predator. What do folks think of me removing some larger YP if caught? Do YP tend to go for the drain pipe or does this mean I likely have a lot of YP in the 1 acre pond?

I thought I had alot of yellow perch in our pond but never see any young from shore in the 4-6" size. I am wondering if farther south they really populate fast. I am not seeing much recruitment at all and we stocked our pond with 400 in 2012. Shiners did get more time in the pond then the perch and the very high population of shiners could be eating the perch fry when small.

We only have five walleye in the pond too as of last year.

No ribbons yet but ice has been out for only a week.
No toads thrilling yet.

Cody Note: When you hear the toads trilling the perch spawn in usually done.

xrayt - says "They (eggs) were like wet toilet paper and were ripping apart. Ended up being a lot of short sections of eggs with the longest being maybe 8 inches or so. I had to throw them a few feet into my friends pond to get them to lay on a submerged pine and then use a longer branch to wrap them in between branches. Are the eggs pretty resilient with some handling like I did? How long until you can minnow trap them and identify there survival?

If the egg ribbons were easily breaking apart then I think they were very close to hatching which is normal that they easily break apart. Eggs as they are hatching are very durable - handling actually speeds up the hatching time. I've never had much luck trapping small perch until they are around 2" long.

Update, 2 ribbons yesterday am, 10 sets of ribbons today. All grouped close together along the S shore. None on SW or SE shores. One feature unique to S shore of pond (outside of no trees so better sun penetration and warmer temps) is that the grade of the slope on the pond bottom is steeper there. I suspect perch can get from deeper water to shallows and back again more quickly on that side of the pond.

ccreek - do you have water temperatures surface and where eggs are? This is your thread of suggested experiment for yellow perch spawning.

49-50 degrees but my probe doesn't go deep enough to check temps say at 20-24". I also wonder if you are on to something that the temps measured right at the top of the oak leaves with sunlight might be quite a bit warmer than the pond bottom right next to it...and only an inch or so deeper.

Also my pond bottom texture and sand composition is much different this year than last. I have enough soilfloc in my sediment now that when you touch the pond bottom with a stick it clunks like concrete. You can't even push a stick into the bottom, you have to pound or drill it in. I used to get a plume of silt when I scratched the bottom sand but now no plume. I don't know if that polymer concrete material heats up or not but it seems that the beds of oak/maple leaves are very popular. All of the ribbons are laying in 8-10" of water on leaf beds, none on dirt, so far none in the reeds nearby (sedge) none in the sticks

Just a quick note on my pond and ribbon production. We've had 2 1/4" of rain in the last 36 hrs. I went by the pond today. It was still raining, and water was still flowing in the inlets. (Although it was more of just a trickle.) The good news is, my water level has come up 18" with the rain. The bad news is, I did not see a single ribbon. Water temps were still in the mid 50s. Clarity was greatly reduced with the runoff. About 12". I'm still about 4' below full pool.
Not sure how this event will impact the YP survival, or if those, now much more submerged, ribbons will hatch.

No ribbons yet visible in my central Indiana pond.

One small ribbon in the shallows, about 8" down on the west side of the pond. Water 4' down is a balmy 43 degrees. First visible ribbon.

A few dead young BCP here and there, looks like starvation if I were to guess. I suppose that is common when you have 3 different ice-outs over this crazy winter, and the last one rather late.

No ribbons spotted here but I did catch a female YP a few days that appeared to have to have done her thing. I will keep looking.

I had 75YP stocked on Tuesday, there were ribbons in holding tank when they removed them ,fish were held at 50deg water temp at hatchery...

Water is pretty murky now with recent rain but will try and get a water temp reading when I notice some in the actual pond.

I still haven't seen any ribbons yet but I did catch a 12" female YP yesterday that had done her thing. I also found a not quite dead yet 9-1/2" male YP floating on the surface that was oozing milt, spawning stress? It has been cool and overcast this week, reported water temps have been 48/49 degrees.

We did a little fishing yesterday. Only caught the shiners on worms. The perch I find hit really hard on worms after they have spawned. Will check water temps here tonight.

Dono - When you are catching mostly shiners on worms and when the water is cold try fishing deep close to or on the bottom. See if that helps the catch success for perch.

Bill, we have a water temp in the 36-37*F at the surface with the air stations running today.

I was fishing right on the bottom with a worm. Caught another white sucker too, but mostly very very large shiners. They were all of 6"s if not more. Found a crayfish hiding under a rock and dropped him on the hook for a good hour moving around the pond placing him on the bottom with no perch action.

I do wonder if we feed them too well in the fall. We have never been able to catch any perch through the ice. They do hit really hard after the spawn. No need to cast just dip the worm in and pull out a fish every time. Just a 1" of worm works with white jig head. Most luck with white or orange jig heads.

Need a few more heat units and I expect to see ribbons around the pond.

Cheers Don.

How long should it take to pellet train perch? My good friend has a very large 10 acre pit that was stocked with yellow perch 20 years ago. They put in about 10,000 so now we can catch a minnow trap full of last years young in minutes.

The plan is to train a bunch to add to our pond and to add to two other friends ponds. Currently have some large tanks set up with big filters at our place here.

Just wondering how long it takes for the young to get imprinted with floating feed?

Cheers Don.

You should be able to get them to eat softened sinking pellets in 7-10 days. However the longer you feed them pellets the better they will stay to eating pellets after they are released into a pond. Just because you have them eating pellets does not mean they will resume eating pellets when released back into the pond. One factor that helps them resume eating pellets is to not have much natural food present when released, so the main food available is just pellets. IMO you should try to feed them pellets for at least 2 months or until they start getting stressed for some reason and you start to see some deaths.

Well that Texas low brought in an nice warm rain last night with temps at 51 degrees as it rained. This triggered our first ribbons. I didn't check the water temp in the pond. Found two ribbons this morning here in Ontario.

My son and I set up this year to hatch them our self's. Here is a few pictures of the ribbons. We used galvanized wire fence 1/2"X1/2" squares rolled in a 1.25" tube. We placed the ribbon inside the tube to hold it down. This was one ribbon that we have split up into three tanks.

Cheers Don.

Now that is just too cool! Should be a very interesting project. Please keep us updated as they develop.

We will for sure. We are going to feed them brine shrimp after they hatch. Not sure yet how the sifting from the live swimming perch from what is left from the ribbon is going to go yet.

I am very familiar with hatching brine shrimp for angel fish so it should go well if the young can choke it down. We need to watch for mold and keep the water temp down. We are lucky to be keeping it at 61*F so far. After they hatch we will bring it up to 70.

Keep you all posted.

Any concern the filters will suck the newborns in? Maybe an air stone while they are hatching and growout a bit. Just a thought....I'd hate to see your hard work end up in the filter floss. Sounds like you have a lot of aquarium experience so just ignore my ramblings, I usually over think things!