Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations fish eggs

curious about catfish eggs if iw ere to clean a female and keep the egg sack intact and i put into a large bucket into a lake with other channel catfish do you think the males would come to fetilize the eggs? i hate to clean a fish and see its eggs its sad knowing the lake could have produced around 300 more catfish from that birth

No lol the males won’t fertilize them . Take the eggs home an fry them up and eat them . Not bad at all

eww lol ii try t force myself to like fish cause i enjoy fishing but i have a weird phobia of certain kind cause had a very bad experience as a child with a gator gar i cant even touch one out of fear today lol


iv heard stories of birds having eggs on there talons and they go to other lakes and the eggs end up hatching so im guessing they were already fertilized

Matt, I tried the duck foot and feathers deal one time. It didn't work for me.

If the eggs are stuck / adhered to a foot and do not dry out on the way to another water body how do the eggs get off the foot? A lot of fish eggs, but not all are very sticky when laid. They stick tightly to what surface they are laid on to endure current, wave action, and in the case of nest builders(sunfishes) withstand the fanning, sweeping and nest cleaning of the male parent fish. I had to use a putty knife to remove carp eggs from the underwater side of a boat.

Are we about to beat this poor horse again!!?? I still think my initial stocking of GSF came from visitation of feathered friends...lol.

yes, one of our favorite topics! The spontaneous combustion/conception of fish in unsupervised ponds!!

Seriously, there should be an easy way to test this. Our texas friends and those in the deep south say that in their experience even a puddle from a thunderstorm will in a few days be populated with gambusia.

So someone with a excavator or scoop on their tractor should just go in the back 40 and scoop out 3-4 shallow trenches and let them fill with rain water.

Then set up some controlled environments. Cover one with netting so that insects can fly in but birds and animals cannot. Make sure that no animals can wade in with fish egg-encrusted feet. Make sure that kingfishers or GBH cannot regurgitate fish as they fly overhead. If you really want to control the environment then set up game cameras to make sure no human trespasser is bucket stocking.

Then on the other trenches you can leave the top open to the sky but fence/mesh off the sides so that land critters can't enter but all entries from the sky are allowed.

Then leave another open completely.

See if by summer any of them have fish in it! many on this forum insist that by summer one of them for sure will even have green sunfish in it!