Thanks for the excellent research Bill. I was also wondering if in a shallow lake that far north that he might be catching pumpkinseeds and not redears. Big PS are in a lot of the lakes in that area and also in newaygo county. Pretty fish!
Corgi, you lost 117 HB, are those hybrid bluegill? Wow that is a lot of HBG to lose. I don't follow exactly how the swamp threatens your pond, but it sounds like overflow somehow goes away from your pond, but when ice dams up the overflow then it goes towards your pond?
I can see where a big surge of stagnant marsh water in the pond all at once would not be good.
What is the restocking plan? Many on this forum would be happy to have less HBG since balance between HGB, GSF, and LMB is a tough one to balance out.
The YP seem to do great in MI ponds. I wish the biologists in MI would give stocking advice around lots of time building forage, then use pellet trained YP as the middle of the food chain (fun to catch, great to eat, tolerant even in warmer water and shallowerlakes, and relatively easy to control numbers through removal of egg strands) and then encourage pond meisters to experiment with different apex predators (rather than LMB and CC) Once LMB are in the mix you almost have to have BG, or HBG and then the balance act begins to avoid stunting.
Sounds like you have a good plan, come good weather to fix things!
