Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Pumpkinseeds in small pond?

Have any of you purposefully stocked or relocated pumpkinseeds into your pond? I don't know anything about them in terms of reproductive rate or if it would be bad to have them in a small pond.

I've caught countless pumpkinseeds in creeks, and would like to have some in the pond if they wouldn't be bad for balance.

Thanks,
Eric

The only negatives I can see is they will hybridize with your bluegills if you have any, and they will not get to a very large size. Supposidly they prefer cooler water than other sunfish and the fact that their natural range extents up into Canada and northern New England seems to back this up.

I may try and feed train some in the future and put them in my yellow perch pond which runs cooler as an experiment. All males probably.

Eric -- we purposely put pumpkinseeds in one pond up here. Like the redears (shellcrackers), the pumpkinseeds eat snails. We've got a bad problem with yellow grub in one pond, and wondered if the pumpkinseeds might reduce the snails and thus the grubs.

They don't get as big as redears. We consistently see the big ones at 8-8.5 inches up here. They spawn more than redears, and will overpopulate and stunt if you don't have a good predator base (e.g., LMB).

I didn't have a chance to look up the pumpkinseed distribution. I didn't know they made it that far south. Lepomis gibbosus, correct?

Eric, do you have a photo of any of the pumpkinseeds that you catch? I'd love to see one just for my personal edification. We don't encounter them around here.

Yes Bruce here is a pic but I don't catch them here. :p

That's one good looking fish!

I have had pumpkinseeds get up to 9" long for me. I will try to get some photos of them from a local pond this summer. This pond was stocked with just pumpkinseeds and LMB. Hopefully this pond did not experience a winter kill during the last several years. I did get them feed trained to pellets in a cage. I stocked them into my pond with LMB and Bgill and the pumpkinseeds did not compete very well with a mixed fishery in my situation.

Eric_in_TN, I also have them. As Dave Willis said, they will reproduce about the same as BG but don't get as big. A breeding male is even brighter than this picture. For me, they provide snail control and whenever someone catches one, they just can't get over how beautiful it is. We tend to get hybrids when we have a lot of one species and few of the other. We a good population of pumpkinseeds, so I don't think we'll have a problem. We also have a grow out pond with SMB and pumpkinseeds that seems to be doing well.

Thanks all for the great info, sorry for not responding sooner. Went to check out the water level in the pond after work Cecil there are no fish in the pond yet, I dug it just over a month ago and it's still filling.

I grew up in western Kentucky a bit north of Bowling Green. Pumpkinseeds are prolific in the creeks there. They are indeed Lepomis Gibbosus, just like the pic Ewest posted. Sorry, I don't have any pics of caught pumkinseeds. They can be even more colorful, sometimes almost neon red and orange. We regularly caught them in creeks on the family farm, and for thier size they are good little fighters. I don't know how they would do in the warmer water of a Southern pond ... never tried it. My land in Tennessee is roughly 70 miles South of where I grew up and the climate should be very similar.

There's a creek on the front of my land but I haven't fished it yet ... sounds like I need to see if there are any pumpkinseeds in it

Thanks,
Eric

I bet you have some in your creek Eric. We are 50 miles south of Nashville and we have both smallies and pumpkinseeds in some of the creeks around here.

ANY HATCHERIES OUT THERE THAT DEAL IN PUMPKINSEEDS?

The only one that I know of is in Minnesota.

WHAT HATCHERIE IS IT CECIL? IS IT MINNESOTA MUSKIE FARM?

According to the Michigan Dept. of Ag. the Imlay City Fish Farm has them.

http://www.grapentin.com/ImlayCityFishFarm.html