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#491346 06/05/18 10:40 PM
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Hello,
Last year in early June I stocked about 50 SFS, they were about evenly mixed male and female and were 4-5" long each. The males were coloring up and getting ready to spawn. I had about 5 crevice devices placed around the pond but could not witness any clustering of shiners around the spawning devices. 2 of the devices were stacks of CDs and were stacks of plastic cardboard squares.

This spring I removed the spawning structure, inspected, powerwashed and will be putting back in when water temps arm up again. I noted no egg residue on the black plastic sheets of plastic cardboard, but the CD stacks had sticky egg residue left in the cracks here and there. I surely am hoping to see young SFS but the question is how do I recognize them?

I think someone said once that from the top the GSH and SFS can be differentiated by the color of their top side? How does that go again?

My GSH have been in the pond for 3 years and there are scads of them. Today I easily got a couple dozen shiners in a trap and took a picture. I thought the more silvery looking ones might be SFS but I think they are just younger GSH that have not shown the golden hue yet.

Will the SFS have the spot on the fin even when 1-2" long or does that spot come only with maturity? Other ways to spot a successful group of YOY SFS?

Maybe there just was only a few successful YOY and they will blend in with my schools of GSH and can't tell them apart?

I know now that the big splashes that come when I feed the fish are the YP taking aim at a cloud of feeding GSH at the top and ambushing them from underneath. I suspected that but wasn't sure. But tonight the kids took the GSH from the trap, baited their hooks with them and could not believe how aggressively the YP smashed the live shiners.

Before they always caught the YP on pieces of corn or bits of worm and they had to work a bit to catch one. With the live shiner it is like hold on for dear life as they smashed them.

There are scads of GSH for the YP so hopefully they will continue to keep their bellies full. It might be time to get some HSB or SMB to help keep the GSH in check after their 2-3 year headstart!



==============
SFS structure









Shiners from the top view (all look dark on the top side to me):




all look to be GSH to me.




Does someone have pictures of the top view of their schools of SFS or a picture of various sizes in a trap or laid out like mine? I can only find internet pictures of single adults and mostly they are 'optimized' paintings or illustrations of SFS.

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sorry, the last picture is taken in dimly lit garage, they are on a white Styrofoam cooler lid so you can see color balance is off.

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IMO those in the picture are all golden shiners. Mature (1yr) spotfins have the dark colored membrane on the dorsal fin plainly visible when the fish are in a plastic bag swimming in water.


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FWIW...I stocked SFS in my pond that also has GSH. The SFS schooled with the GSH and were easy to spot. Their back was a brown color while the GSH were slate grey. I agree with Bill C. The fish in your pic look like GSH.

Not a pro...just sharing my limited experience


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Bill D, I thought someone had said something about a color difference on their backs when a group had both SFS and GSH in it. THanks for coming back and replying to my question.

Now in my picture above I would say the backs of the GSH look brown to me but you said the SFS had a 'brown' color and GSH were slate grey. Do the backs of the GSH in the bucket in my picture above have the 'brown' color that you saw in your pond? I see my GSH having more the typical color of a northern bluegill when viewed from the top. I don't see much grey there.

I guess if you have time and have a good picture of what you see that would really help me.

I probably had a really limited SFS spawn if any last summer so maybe there just isn't a 'school' of SFS to see yet.

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Hard for me to see in the bucket. What I can say though is that my SFS that size had the red spot on the dorsal.

Here is a pic of what I mean by "brown" on the back of one of my SFS.


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Spotfin.JPG
Last edited by Bill D.; 06/07/18 12:09 PM.

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" What is the best structure for GSH spawning?

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Best spawning substrates for GSH are filamentous algae mats along shore and various types of grass growing in shallow water. Fish farms use shag rug mats or fibrous mats as spawn substrate placed along shore in shallow water (3"-6" deep).


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Thanks I should have no problem with that.


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