Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Lake Chub Suckers

Has anyone in Texas put these in for additional forage and if so where did you get them?

Thanks
Gregg

Texas715 - You still out there? IMO Lake chub suckers are a great supplimental forage fish that would be VERY beneficial in several or numerous stocking combinations. THE BIG PROBLEM IS I DON'T KNOW OF A HATCHERY IN THE US THAT GROWS THEM. Very sad indeed.

Right now I don't know of a lot of negatives about them as a large sized (up to 15", Florida usu 6"-9") soft rayed, forage fish that survives in a wide range of water temperatures as opposed to the theadfin shad that does not like cold water. Chubsuckers distribution range is from Florida to north as far as central Wisconsin. They tolerate some deteriorated water quality - stress and low DO (0.3-0.5 ppm). IMO main disadvantage is they are not good table fare but neither are shad IMO. They are a great baitfish since they tolerate handling stress similar to fatheads. IMO in many respects, lake chubsuckers have many features of an overgrown fathead minnow. Most of us know and appreciate the benefits of FHM. Fish growers are you listening?

The lake chub sucker is not as prolific as the threadfin. It's fecundity reaches to 20000 eggs per female.

What's nearly five years for an answer when you could actually have Lake Chub Suckers!

I've given up on that idea and I'm working on other plans and projects.

davasta. I'm not sure what you mean by your comment above, and don't take this wrong, but if one starts looking for chubsuckers to buy from a hatchery it will probably take longer than 5 yrs to find them. If you doubt me, try buying some and please let know where they can be acquired; I'd like some.

TX715 - Glad to read you are still hanging around here.

Don't be too hard on the young man, Bill. I've probably been a bad influence on him.

Just teasin' Bill. I don't even know what Lake Chub Suckers are, so I certainly believe anything you say about them. I'm just impressed you found this thread!

Theo- have you ever been a bad influence on anyone?

Oh yeah. Just ask my wife.

I will tell you in July why I have to attend ALL Parent-Teacher conferences for our 2 kids.

davasta, I suspected a kidding on this one. I was manually browsing looking for another topic and ran across this OLD Chubsucker thread. Chubsukers are a frustating passion for me.
I am not smart enough to efficiently use the search feature here so often I have to search manually and rely on my memory is is getting foggy.

Anyway I cannot figure out why someone does not raise chubsuckers. They are a very good, very under utilized, niche forage fish that could have wide ranging appeal. Maybe locating breeders is one of the problems. Obviously locating breeder chubsukers is a lot harder than getting breeder FHM or G.shiners.
Of course if you look at it from purely an economic standpoint then selling FHM is the way to go cause they quickly get eliminated thus creating a need to BUY more.

Built-in obsolescence.

Bill, is there a scientific name for the lake chubsuckers you are talking about? A ran a google search and it appears that there are a lot of different types of fish that are called lake chubsuckers. One of our local bait shops sells lake chubsuckers but my guess is that this is not the type of lake chubsucker you are talking about.

http://nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/FactSheet.asp?speciesID=358

Are you talking the Lake Chubsucker:

http://www.outdooralabama.com/fishing/freshwater/fish/other/sucker/lake/

Or the Creek Chubsucker (this one looks more viable as its overall length is smaller):

http://www.outdooralabama.com/fishing/freshwater/fish/other/sucker/creek/

Or maybe none of the above.