Originally posted by GW: What I hope is that some of you can switch gears from repeating the common wisdom about GSF and give a thought to how you might manage for trophy Greenies.
GW,
I'm not one of those "common wisdom" folks who abhore GSF. In fact, I love the aggressiveness of the GSF. On little rivers and oxbows in this part of the world, they provide some extreme excitement on the right tackle. They can be a great fish...
Having said that, I've never had much of any success with them in ponds. They simply can not withstand the pressure from LMB in my ponds. On occasion, I've had GSF introduced to a pond by unwanted hatchery stocking when stocking other fish. The GSF always disappear completely after a couple of years.
I think if I were to try for a trophy greenie pond, I might choose the HSB as the predator. They are an inferior predator to the LMB on sunfish and as we've discussed in other threads, without artificial feeding, it would seem they would have a good chance at controlling the greenies and giving you a shot at trophy ones. Its an interesting thought, a trophy greenie pond...hmmm I like the thought of that...what do you think of the HSB/GSF combo? One downside would be the catchability of the HSB in a small pond over time, but the greenies would probably more than make up for that with their aggressiveness. Throw in some Gams and you might just have an interesting pond.
I just don't know if the HSB would keep the numbers of small fish down sufficiently....they didn't in my GG pond, but maybe GSF would be different...and again, success may depend on how tolerant you are of also catching small fish.
