John (snrub),
I have caught Pumpkinseeds in the Boy Scout lake that is in your area. I would estimate 1 per 50 or 1 per 100 of the panfish caught were PS. Unless they require the habitat of the lake environment, then I think they would survive in your ponds.
I have never caught a RES in the Boy Scout lake - unless I somehow misidentified a female. (We usually catch the panfish when using very light tackle for bass - so we probably land a much higher percentage of GSF and have skewed results compared to the actual populations.)
I didn't know that you had stocked some CNBG in your ponds. I thought you were just past the northern edge of their survival territory. How are their growth rates compared to your RES and HBG?
Thanks.
I'm not familiar with the Boy Scout lake. What town is it nearest? If there are PS in the area, I would not have the hesitation to stock some. With my BG population as strong as it is and LMB in the pond, the PS would never become anything more than a novelty catch once in a while. I don't see where their numbers could ever grow to significance with the BG already established so well.
My main pond was stocked with northern BG. When I built a 1/10th acre sediment pond that about half my watershed area runs through before it gets to main pond, I put 175 (out of 200 purchased) RES and 100 CNBG from Dunn's fish farm in Arkansas (edit correction - Dunn's is out of Oklahoma) (my main pond was stocked from Wallace Fish Farms in Kansas). At least Dunn's calls them CNBG (there has been speculation that maybe they are some intergrade between northern and CNBG). They do have a somewhat different appearance in that they seem to be somewhat more dishpan shaped with a taller profile and as they have grown the copper is showing up more. It was kind of an experiment. These fish in my opinion have not seemed to thrive as well as their northern counterparts, but that is just my opinion. I wonder if I did not get a pretty large winter kill the first year as the fish were 2" stocked in the fall of last year. These fish will integrate and intermix with the main pond as I have caught some of the larger ones and transferred as well as the overflow water runs directly in the big pond. The CNBG are pretty though. Dunn's route truck goes as far north as central Kansas to sell fish, although they tend to push the HBG more than the CNBG.
