Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Leeches

Any opinions as to whether or not having leeches in your pond is good or bad? We have a very small variety in our pond, 1/2" in length, dark gray, with two black stripes running down it. Every summer there is about 6-8 week period where almost every LMB has several leeches attached to the inside of its mouth. When it starts to cool down the leeches disappear and the LMB mouths start to heal up rather quickly. I am not real concerned about it but thought it might be interesting to discuss the pros and cons of having leeches present in the pond with fish.

Shorty,

Sounds like you have the parasitic kind that feed on live fish. I've seen that a couple times in my warmwater pond several years ago but not for some time.

Draining my trout pond recenty I saw many of the kind that are used for bait for primarily walleye. Wish I could have collected them. They are excellent bait and I know the trout ate them as I had at least one spit one out after capture.

Shorty,
what other fish species do you have in the pond? I would think that a strong panfish population would decrease that sized leech. Copper sulfate is sometimes used as an invertebrate kill all.

We have lots of BG, maybe a few smallmouth, a few CC, and few grass carp. I really don't think the leeches are much of a problem, I do think the BG eat their fair share of the leeches. I also think the LMB do as well but with the larger mouth they do not get all of them get down the hatch. We also have quite the variety of weeds which I feel is more of a problem for the fish but that is whole other thread, it does however lead to fairly high denisities of both BG and LMB and possibly a higher abundance of small leeches and snails.

Here is a 15-16" LMB I caught Saturday, the dark spot on the roof of it's mouth is a small leech roughly a 1/4" in length. The bass seemed to be healthy.