Pond Boss Forums FISH & FISHING Sunfish-Including Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass F1 Blue Gill

I see a lot of discussion around F1 LMB (Northern x FL)

I don't recall seeing any purposeful F1 production of or discussion around any benefits or downsides to stocking a pond with F1 (Northern x Coppernose) Blue Gill.

Has any one tried stocking F1 BG? Perhaps I just missed the discussion buried some place.

It has been about a decade since creating a lot of F1's based in part on wild bluegill stocks from over much of the US. My experiment was not set up to evaluate crosses relative to pure, rather to initiate a selection process on a stock with extremely high genetic diversity. We are now into F3 and F4 generations with that effort. What I would be looking for is a skewed sex ratio towards male.

Again I stress, there is more than one type of Coppernose Bluegill. They differ markedly from each other. In my opinion some of the differences may ultimately be considered species level.

Northern Bluegill are more homogeneous although those of the Mobile River drainage would be the ones that stand apart.

There is very little written data (that I have seen) on various BG crosses. The reason is , unlike LMB , there is not a big calling by the public ($) in the BG crosses. There is a huge trophy LMB industry and thus $ for research and that is not yet the case for BG. I will check some more for info as I would like to see it also. Maybe Jim can direct you to some unpublished info.

I have not stocked F1's but should already have some naturally from the CNBG I introduced into an already established population of northern BG. That is about all I can tell you right now though. For me, identifying the F1's may be difficult.

My CNBG came from Dunn's Fish farm in Oklahoma. Northern BG came from Wallace Fish farm in Kansas.