Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Pond Boss How are your stocks?

Just didn't want you to think I forgot you Cecil, water is probably a bit brisk these days for laps eh?

As far as stocks go, I have only dabbled in the fathead market this year, returns were good though, I bought 9 shares of various sizes and they split into literally thousands of tiny shares, heh heh. I have fed ground up floating feed, water softened feed, and even equipped a 28 inch tractor tire inner tube with a screen and some slow ground hogs from the back 40 which is still producing tremendous forage, 1 fly egg at a time for them. If I was never convinced before, I am now, the feeder is on one side of the pond, the minnows on the other side are not as fat and sassy as the fed stock on the near side. It is easy to see how feeding helps even minnows, I owe it all to the advice of the folks on this site. I am mind-designing a forage pond for next year that would dump fry back into the main pond too. It would have an overflow that would restrict brood stock from leaving but the new shares would easily slip thru. This would prevent total eradication of my brood stock, as I have been warned will happen in the main BOW.

Next year I plan to buy a couple hundred YP shares, feed trained, and am still thinking I will make the drive to get some good RES stock to have alongside them. I will let them feed thru the summer and devise some sort of predation investment scheme for the fall. HSB is the likliest choice since I want to manage perch not predators, and they won't reproduce on me.

My pond continues to fill, I expect to have full pool by Thanksgiving or sooner, it won't take long when the fall rains come.

That's all I got, sorry if it is longwinded, but you asked.

glad you got lots o water Joe G, it makes pondbossing alot easier. well of course if'n ya aint got no water than pondbossing is a snap.

cecil, that's not a very complimentary photo of a sac perch, check this one out:


its really a beautiful fish.

if my water holds out, i'm thinkin i liked poor old mortimer's ideas, and may stock some additional bass this size

hopefully all of the same sex.

They are more closely related to Crappie than any other widely known Centrachidae (see lines 6, 7, & 8) (unless you consider Rock Bass widely known):

Guys (so far no gals responded)- Thanks for all the great opinions and understanding comments about this site.
And to CB1's question of - "Anybody else excited about next year or going to add a new species?" About a week ago, I added 650 black stripe topminnows (similar to blackspotted topminow) to the perch pond. IMO they are a central US border to border version of the mosquito fish (Gambusia). They are a top water crusing fish that feeds primarily on small crustaceans and little insect larvae and probably some very small fish fry. No problem for me if they eat a few fish fry I usually have too many fry survive anyway. I added them more for novelty than a forage food base, but they will divesify the food chain.

Bill did you buy them or catch them and grow them out?

Hurricane and other related matters have slowded down my predator stocks (both sub species of LMB and their cross and the HSB) and large CNBG. The small CNBG , RES and FH are growing like weeds. TShad will be added soon.

Are they as prolific as Gambusia, Bill?

This year, my Gambusia penny stocks have split and split and split ...

Topminows are not nearly as prolific as Gambusia which I consider a plus. They are not live bearers but egg layers where eggs are deposited on FA or plant stems in shallow water. The main benefit I like is their ability to withstand the northern winters. A friend(my source) had very good recruitment of topminnows this year in his perch pond that included a few walleyes. Original stock came from a local drainage ditch.

I expanded my portfolio in the past few weeks.

Put a bunch of gambusia in.. and ordered about 30 lbs of goldfish from Andersons... why GF? cheapish food that I'm trying out. I can actually get them locally from a fish farmer pretty cheap and was looking at it as a supplemental forage for my lmb and smb if it works. I can get 2-4" and 4-6" fish.

I'm going to cull some of the bass either late fall or early spring, but want to feed like crazy to see who the fast growers are. My thinking is that it's pretty cheap to feed the GF and I don't have much risk in a small pond. My biggest LMB are now about 16.5" so I'm putting in 3-4" GF. Was considering trout for the winter, but this seems cheaper and easier - and those big gold glowing slow moving fish seem like the easiest prey to stuff the bass with.

Aaron keep good notes on if they change colors and how long the GF last. Neat project.

Thanks Eric, I'll do so. I'm assuming they bass will turn yellowish.. I was going to see if it got bad and then maybe switch back to shiners to keep them with varied diet. They've got BG as well, but the YOY are a little more sparse this time of year. I should have weighed a couple of the GF before I put them in. I'm really curious if I can figure out the math of feeding a specific number of fish. Everyone says they convert at 2 to 1... and if I want the bass to gain max weight, I'm assuming they'll gain 1-2 lbs a year. So if 300 of these GF weigh 10 lbs (that's what Anderson said), I'm guessing that they'd eat one every couple days - but that doesn't seem that aggressive.

With this project I should be able to get the size of the forage up with 4-6" GF as they bass grow... since I can get them for about $.02-.04 a piece, that's easy to do. GF grow really fast as well, so I'm guessing if I get the stocking right and frequent enough I can end up getting some 8-12" GF when the time is right and I have 20"+ bass. Assuming a LMB can eat a GF half it's size.. and maybe 1/3 the size for SMB? They're pretty fusiform and don't have spines.. Don't know... Anyone experimented with goldfish in depth?

Amazing what I'll do to try my hardest to grow a double digit lmb in a small pond! Even if it takes me 8-10 years!

Cecil, there are several fish farms around our area that raise and sell Sacramento Perch. They are not an endangered or protected species it's just that their numbers are severely dimished. There is just a movement afoot to reintroduce them into Northern California waters. They are the only native sunfish to Northern California. The supposedly fight like crazy when caught and can be a fairly good size. Reproduction may not be great, they are not "nest guarders." They simply scatter eggs and don't guard the nest so the eggs are open to predation. But I figure I'll put a 100 or so in and if they don't have much reproduction success what the heck, at least it will be a fun native sunfish to catch.

it'd be tough to catch them out of the wild and get them to the ponds. about the only places left you can fish for them are lake crowley on the east side of the sierras or pyramid lake over in nevada. to my knowledge, theyve been completely wiped out of the delta.

Dont sell short any of the sunfish species; they may pay huge dividends given a diverse portfolio of nesting options.

I have a lot of diverse nesting areas so perhaps I might have some luck with getting the Sacramento Perch to breed. We (JWHAP and I) were very excited this last trip when JWHAP caught a young RES. So now we know that this past year we had every fish in the pond breed (LMB,GSF,BG,RES,Bullhead and of course Gams). I think in a year or two our pond will be back to what it was before the fish kill.

rain, c'mon rain......we're supposed to get a shot in the arm later this afternoon and through tonight....first rain since may.......stocks are rising on the news.

Aaron,
I may be wrong, but I think that a fish will convert artificial feed at a rate of 2:1 and live food at a rate of 10:1.

Those are indeed the rule-of-thumb conversion rates, Chris.

Fish add water to the dry fish feed when turning it into flesh, so it has a much higher conversion rate than eating fish, which are mostly water to start with.

Happy Birthday, bbjr!

I rebalanced my portfolio a week or two back with 140 lbs. of fathead minnows.

A wealth redistribution was then done by the predatory lenders in my pond by hostile takeover of many of the newly bought shares of fatheads.

Dry weight to wet weight is the confusion. 2 to 1 dry weight and 10 to 1 wet weight. You have to compare apples to apples. But those can vary a large amount. Its an energetics thing.

Eric, this is a thread about stocks, not apples. Do you have an apple orchard in your portfolio. ?

Yeah, should have been clearer.. so is it assumed then that a live fish is about 80% water?

No apples just a comparison of like matter.



Nutrient Content of Clupeid Forage Fishes

RICHARD J. STRANGE AND JANICE C. PELTON



Overall ranges of nutrients for all collections

were as follows: moisture, 69.7-84.9% (N = 52);

ash, 12.0-32.5% (N = 49); protein, 45.4-79.1%

(N = 55); fat, 3.3-31.5% (N = 39); and gross energy,

3.92-6.06 kcal.g • (N = 57). Results for ash,

protein, fat, and gross energy are and will be expressed

on a dry-weight basis unless otherwise

specified.



The clupeids examined during the present study

appear to be intermediate in nutritional value in

comparison with other forage fishes. Mean fat percentage

of Dorosoma spp. (24.2%) exceeded that

ofLepomis spp. (15.2%) and fathead minnows Pimephales

promelas (19.1%), but was less than that

of mosquitofish Gambusia affinis (25.8%) and

golden shiners Notemigonus crysoleucas (34.8%)

(Davis and Boyd 1978). Bluegills Lepomis macrochirus

had lower caloric contents (1.06 kcal-g-•

on a wet-weight basis) than gizzard and threadfin

shad (1.17 kcal-g • on a wet-weight basis) (Minton

and McLean 1982); preliminary data collected

for the present study also showed Lepomis spp. to

he lower in caloric content than the clupeids. The

primary reason for the lower energy content of

Lepomis spp. is probably a higher ash content,

rather than a lower fat content. Mean ash content

of Lepomis spp. was 23.8%; the mean for Dorosoma

spp. was 16.1% (Davis and Boyd 1978).

Scales ofLepomis spp. are larger and thicker than

those of Dorosoma spp., and their skeletal structure

may be more substantial. Scales are about 30-

35% ash on a dry-weight basis (Lagler et al. 1977).

Nutrient content of an apple:

Apple Nutrition Facts
(*One medium 2-1/2 inch apple, fresh, raw, with skin)

Calories 81
Carbohydrate 21 grams
Dietary Fiber 4 grams
Soluble Fiber
Insoluble fiber
Calcium 10 mg
Phosphorus 10 mg Iron .25 mg
Sodium 0.00 mg
Potassium 159 mg
Vitamin C 8 mg
Vitamin A 73 IU
Folate 4 mcg

*The nutritional value of apples will vary slightly depending on the variety and size.

Source: USDA Nutrient Data Laboratory -- Apple

I've seen several feed mills making feeds with higher fat content, due to many requests. Would this higher fat apply to only trout, and other cold water fishes, or could warm water fish, such as HSB, benefit; and if so, how?

Higher than what - apples ?