SetterGuy, I know it was frustrating to never be able to catch one of your original HSB stockers, but what a great thing to be able to say that this time around they are alive and kicking! Post pictures when you can and I'm thrilled for you.
It is strange that your YP aren't reproducing and the next generation growing up. I too seem to have very little survival of the YOY YP in the last 2 years and despite an over abundance of egg strands this spring, cannot find the typical small YP on the bottom in the shallows like I used to see. I haven't see any baby or juvenile YP this year at all. I'm afraid the GSH that I have left are quite large and vacuuming up the YP fry as they swim up. I may have to just restock 4-5" YP at some point as my adult YP are getting 'long in the tooth'
we are catching very large GSH 7" or more on small hooks baited with corn or worms. If we could catch a bunch and save them they would make a great resale opportunity for large predator fisherman (catfish, northern pike, LMB, SMB) or the local baitshop.
We don't see any smaller GSH so hopefully the old females have become sterile.
I'm stunned by how many SFS babies we have this week. We got the monsoon rains (6-7" or so this past weekend) and the pond is up over the grass a couple feet into the front yard. The flooded grass unfortunately will die (again) and I'll have to reseed, but the tiny, tiny SFS babies are loving hanging out in the grass. My FA broke up and there are tons of floating small patches all over the pond. I'm leaving it for now as every floating patch is teeming with critters and the little minnows all have a place to hide out. The turtles even are climbing on top of the bigger floating patches and hanging out in the sun.
Still can't get them to go in traps so need to keep working on a way to sequester in a smaller holding cell (hopefully they will go in by themselves with attractant or something) and then would love to share this abundance with others. I was thinking that since they are strongly attracted to moving water and try to swim upstream in any current that I could maybe use a waterfall pump to pump a stream of water into a large plastic tote or water tank that is in the pond through a small opening. If they swim in on their own it might be easier to trap and net them out. I would try to seine them but they are the fastest fish I have ever seen so all I get is a big seine net full of mud and FA.
I only have a couple stacks of CDs for spawning structure no different than other years, but I also put in 4 fairly good tires horizontally under the deep end of some pallets this spring. I was hoping they might use the spaces left in the remaining tread lines on the tires to spawn in. Something went well this season!!
Others having bumper crops of FHM or SFS? With all the floating FA cover in the pond, and all the baby SFS for distraction for the predators (and the 4 new pallet structures) I was even thinking of trying another bag of FHMs. Before with hungry YP and no structure they never lasted but maybe... maybe this time we can establish some FHMs and get them to reproduce fast enough to stay ahead of the predators?
SetterGuy, your SMB must be growing like crazy with all those shiners!!
