Well, golden shiners are used almost exclusively in the bait market for use as crappie bait, so in all likelihood, your left over crappie bait is just bigger golden shiners particularly if they are coming from Arkansas...
Golden shiners spawn in shallow flooded grassy areas... It would makes sense the best place to place newly hatched fry for the highest survival rate would be shallow grassy areas??? Try to match nature as much as possible. Eric, maybe you can dig up a study on this topic, if one has even been done...
Have you ever set up a minnow trap in your pond? If not, you ought to give it a try. See what you catch... Try running a seine in the shallows as well. That will give you a good idea if you currently have any golden shiners in your pond and how well your BG and LMB spawn this year as been.
Then you can seine next year and compare... If you see a larger number of GSF, you know the 1 million fry took hold!
Keep hammering those crappie!
