Just had my two boys (8 and 10 yrs old) down to NJ (I live in rural upstate NY) for a 4 day "guys" weekend (fishing, beer for me, BB guns, fishing, model rockets, swimming, R/C planes, more beer for me, fishing, add crayfish, adding structure and yet more more fishing). I have "adopted" my uncle's 1.5 acre farm pond since a fish kill 3 yrs ago wiped out the LMB. We re-stocked FH, LMB in addition to bluegills and some Yellow perch 3 yrs ago. The pond never had green sunfish in it, but my kids had caught maybe 5 or 6 (max) sunfish YOY - 1 inch) from a river nearby that we threw in 3 years ago - I thought no harm. I did not know at the time the difference between all the sunfish species, but learned much on this website. I assume that is where the GSF came from. We did catch tons of regular bluegill this past weekend, but in one corner of the pond, the GSF seemed to have marked their territory and that is all we catch in that area. These guys are amazing - they fight well and I caught them on small feeder goldfish used for bait - they are big guys. I really like the diversity of the GSF in the mix as they are quite different from the BG and fight hard and patrol the shore in a very authoritative way. Only thing I see is that we are low on YOY hatches of anything this year - we only saw maybe less than 1 dozen small (1 inch) sunnies or bass - but didd see some 3 inch bass and sunnies presumably from last year. I also saw many active nests, so maybe the spawns are late this year. I don't necessarily blame the GSF for eating too many small fish - I think I was also overly rambunctious in my re-stocking of LMB and YP 3 years ago and we probably have too many predators overall. If you throw a worm in, you immediately hook something (we caught BG, GSF, and small LMB, but interestingly no YP)
Anyway, I know many people hate GSF, but I like the diversity they add and they are actually a nice looking fish with their coloring. I am going to let it flow for another year and not remove anything unless it looks like the population is getting out of balance. I also am basing this on what I have read on this site where the GSF will never take over since BG will outspawn them and LMB prefer the GSF for forage due to their lower profile. I think I need to get the checkbook out to join the GSF society.
