Are those too big for yourr SMB Shorty? If so, I may face the same problem some day.
What about adding a half dozen HSB? I happen to know someone near you raising some.
Probably not but the minor SMB kill I had in July has left me short on bigger SMB. Also, my large GSH have kept SMB recruitment on the very low side, I need more predators.
If you have a cast net you might try feeding them and cast the net when they are in a feeding frenzy. I get some larger sizes when I do this in my forage pond.
Wow Shorty that is a textbook specimen for GSH! If you could catch or net them say a dozen at a time couldn't you sell them for bait for large fish anglers (like NP or lunker LMB?)
I have caught a few nice RES in the last couple of weeks and a bunch of smaller ones, nothing over 10" yet.
In the last two weeks I have removed 101 GSH out my 1/4 acre pond, most of them in the 7-8" size range with a few bigger and a few smaller. It is starting to have an impact when I feed pellets, I am seeing more RES eat now and it's taking longer for the pellets to get cleaned up. Two weeks ago all of the pellets would be cleaned up in a few minutes, now it's taking twice as long. I still saw lots of big GSH eating pellets tonight so I am going to keep thinning them down.
I should mention that I had a huge GSH hatch this year, the early hatched GSH are 2"+ now, 4-6" GSH from last year are also very numerous. My SMB numbers are too low to keep up with them.
Don't get me wrong, I'm loving the fact that my surface temp has gone down to 82*, but enough is enough with this rain already. I know there's a plethora of ponds out there that can use more water. The mosquitos are so bad now they will absolutely try to carry you off. The parish is flying planes to spray every night. It's rained every day for the last 9 days. Probably in excess of 6 inches here at the house.
.10 surface acre pond, 10.5 foot deep. SW LA. The epitome of a mutt pond. BG, LMB, GSF, RES, BH, Warmouth, Longear Sunfish, Gambusia,Mud Minnows, Crappie, and now shiners!!...I subscribe!!
Shorty, how do you get the GSH to bite? I'm curious also how you gauge the population of hatch, 2" size or 4-6" size, do you net occasionally?
I am seeing a summer 'hatch' now with a few schools of 1/2" - 1" shiners. I can't tell if they are GSH or spotfins. I see the schools hang out around the crevice structures that I set out in the pond so I'm hoping they are spotfins staying close to the place where they hatched since they most likely had a recent warm weather spawn hatch?
I was hoping to have side by side healthy populations of both SFS and GSH. I didn't think the large GSH would be able to eat the eggs of the SFS since they are in the tiny crevices in my artificial structures. I think the GSH are helping control the FA and are probably helping control my very small YP fish population.
I don't have a way to gauge size or quantity of large GSH but I know there are some as the kids have caught a few in the 5-6" range while using corn to catch goldfish.
I think the YP are filling up on pellets, then shiner minnows of one type or the other but I was also hoping to get a huge number of shiners before putting in my predator fish.
Others talk of clouds of minnows all around the pond and I rarely see that. Of course with GSH they need vegetation to lay their eggs into and I still have none.
Micro jigs (Wapsi 1/80th oz #10) on a weighted bobber with a small pellet size piece of nightcrawler. Same rig I use for RES except I fish it shallow off the bank over deeper water. For RES I set the jig and fish it so it is on or near the bottom closer to the bank and use a bigger piece of nightcrawler.
I put a few early hatch GSH in my aquarium just to see if they would survive and to see what kind of fish they were, I was hoping they were RES fry. Surprisingly they did survive and are in the 2 to 2-1/2" size range now. I have also been watching the fry all summer next to the dock, they started hatching in late June, they have out performed my aquarium GSH in growth.
If Bill Cody is reading this then I'm curious if he or anyone knows what typically can be expected when GSH and spotfins are living side by side. Does one outcompete the other or because they lay eggs in different places at different times do they coexist.
I know GSH dart around erratically and swim very fast, I wonder if both shiners species can about equally avoid being eaten by RES and YP?
Shorty have you thought of adding other shiner types or FHM in with your RES?
I still have FHM from my original stocking 7 years ago, as the fry in my aquarium got bigger I thought they might actually be FHM. I watched a large male FHM darting in and out of the rocks next to my dock earlier this summer claiming a spawning area.
I catch my rosies darting into the cracks of my broken brick piles in shallow water too. Don't know if they use the deeper stuff (3-5' deep) tho. My small GSF use the same areas too...until they outgrow the space, anyway.
.10 surface acre pond, 10.5 foot deep. SW LA. The epitome of a mutt pond. BG, LMB, GSF, RES, BH, Warmouth, Longear Sunfish, Gambusia,Mud Minnows, Crappie, and now shiners!!...I subscribe!!
I catch my rosies darting into the cracks of my broken brick piles in shallow water too. Don't know if they use the deeper stuff (3-5' deep) tho. My small GSF use the same areas too...until they outgrow the space, anyway.
.10 surface acre pond, 10.5 foot deep. SW LA. The epitome of a mutt pond. BG, LMB, GSF, RES, BH, Warmouth, Longear Sunfish, Gambusia,Mud Minnows, Crappie, and now shiners!!...I subscribe!!
So this morning I went out and did some water testing. After over a week of daily rainfall, I'm concerned what all this rain and runoff is doing to the chemistry of the pond.
While the Alk reading hasn't changed much (80ppm), my Ph has skyrocketed. My wide range tester indicates a ph over 9.0, where its been staying no higher than 8. I also noticed on one occassion, the runoff coming in from next door had a milky color to it. Today, I saw he has a burn pile in his back yard and all that ash is being flooded into my pond.
Is this ash causing my ph swing, and if so, will throwing more aglime into the pond help stabilize the problem?
.10 surface acre pond, 10.5 foot deep. SW LA. The epitome of a mutt pond. BG, LMB, GSF, RES, BH, Warmouth, Longear Sunfish, Gambusia,Mud Minnows, Crappie, and now shiners!!...I subscribe!!
I did something that I now regret: Allowed a guy & his 5 year old son to fish my BOW in my absence. They caught a bunch of nice LMB, including two good ones by the son, which pleased me.
However, when I saw the pic, I realized that the guy did not just fish from the dam as I'd asked. He did avoid the feeders, or so he says, but he admitted fishing away from the dam.
He seems to think that he did nothing wrong, and is probably sincere as otherwise it makes no sense for him to send me of pic which is clearly not on the dam. But I did ask him to stay on dam area and away from feeders, which he only partly did.
I'm thinking maybe best thing I could do is to ask him to fish only when I'm present in the future. May have to change lock combo just to make sure, he lives near me and could easily get in.
Anthro, absoletely say no fishin without me. It's your pond and your $ and effort. I find it's hard ta trust myself. If he lives near and just happens ta show up without callin, might be a good time for settin up a practice target very near the pond.
Do nature a favor, spay/neuter your pets and any weird friends or relatives.
Anthro, absoletely say no fishin without me. It's your pond and your $ and effort. I find it's hard ta trust myself. If he lives near and just happens ta show up without callin, might be a good time for settin up a practice target very near the pond.
Do nature a favor, spay/neuter your pets and any weird friends or relatives.
After the aerator shut down this morning, I took my cup of coffee out for a little stroll around the pond and I noticed something really strange. All of the clumps of FA around the edges looked as tho someone had sprinkled tiny pieces of tan colored grass clippings on top of them. The coating looked dry, but dispersed when you touched it.
Anyone ever witness this phenomenon before?
.10 surface acre pond, 10.5 foot deep. SW LA. The epitome of a mutt pond. BG, LMB, GSF, RES, BH, Warmouth, Longear Sunfish, Gambusia,Mud Minnows, Crappie, and now shiners!!...I subscribe!!
It looks like some critter made those clippings. Any muskrats or otters around?
Living in close proximity to a large swamp bottom, thats a possibility, but I've not seen any sign of anything. Tho I have found my small patch of lanceleaf arrowhead appears to have had most of its stems broken off right at the waterline. Not eaten, mind you, just broken off. I put that off as possible wind damage with the high water or maybe turtles.
The "clippings", IMO, are way too small for any kind of rodent to have created. I was thinking maybe some kind of insect cutting, or maybe it drifted in with the breeze from the trees around my property. I haven't been able to mow around the pond in a couple of weeks, so it's not my doing.
.10 surface acre pond, 10.5 foot deep. SW LA. The epitome of a mutt pond. BG, LMB, GSF, RES, BH, Warmouth, Longear Sunfish, Gambusia,Mud Minnows, Crappie, and now shiners!!...I subscribe!!