Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Transporting fish II & fish trap results

I hope Omaha get's his fish transporting set-up & I didn't want to hijack his thread, so here is a new one with the Rule aerator and ice chest.. Set the two self made traps baited with bread in this 1/3 acre pond along with a funnel collapsible trap baited with cat food.

Left them alone for 5 hours and when I checked them there was a whole (3) 1-2" CNBG in one and (3) 2-3"CNBG in the cat food trap. No Joy there, so got the ultra lite tackle and did some fishing. I could get a bite with every throw using Red Wigglers and a #6 brim hook, but hooked a few too deep and so went to spinner baits. Here's what I caught in about an hour




I put (12) of the 8" CNBG along with a few smaller ones and (3) of the LMB in my cooler/fish transporter

and brought them to where I live (1 1/2 hours) and put them in the pond behind me

All the fish did great, but I am still bumbed out about the fish traps. Last time I tried Aquamax 500 and got nothing. May try some worms, but not sure how to rig them up in the trap..du

That's one skinny LMB.

Yes Sunil it is. I have never fished this pond until late last year because I thought it went dry in 2006. But after catching some CNBG last year I seined it (first & last time my wife will help) and caught a bunch of tiny CNBG. I have no clue where the CNBG or LMB came from. I've been focused on the new bigger pond so I'm leaning toward making this a forage type pond. I'm just dinking around with catching fish out of this pond and putting them at my house. The house pond did go dry in 2006 so I dug it out deeper, but haven't done anything with it since. du

Congrats on the successful exercise from capture to release. What a difference btw those two ponds...I'll bet they are grateful for the new digs and will reward you by growing exponentially!

Any idea on how many fish you can move in a cooler/aerator setup like that? I have a large 150qt cooler that im thinking about setting up like this. Just curious as to how much aeration it provides, I've never used anything like this.


Nice pond btw!

Lots of variables in that... Size of fish, species of fish, temperature of water would lead the list... A bunch of tilapia would do a whole lot better than trout.

absolutely i was more or less just seeing what people have pulled off in the past. Im gonna set up this unit with the 150qt and do a test run with bass around 14-18". Im gonna clean them anyways so i figure i'll load it up and see what happens.

I'll be moving 10-12" Florida bass in the fall that are extremely important to other ponds hopefully i'll know what my limits are.

Also I'll be moving 1-2" CNBG also in one of these. I ought to be able to put quite a few in there I'd think.

Anyways, I apologize for hijacking the thread. This is a really interesting topic for me though.

If the water temp is below 80, I think in that size cooler, you'd be safe with 6 fish per hour in the 12" bass range. So if your trip is 1 hour, you could pull of 6 fish, 2 hours 3 fish, etc... Smaller BG like 1"-2" CNBG, I get you could pull off 100.

Sorry to hear the trap didn't work very well for you. Hopefully you find something that works. I like the simplicity of the set up you have there and I think I'm going to consider that. Can you provide a link for that Rule oxygenator you used? You said it was only $26 I believe in my thread.

You should be safe with about 1 pound of fish per gallon in aerated water for a few hours. If you can use some ice to get the water temp to 60 for non-cold water species itt would be better but that increases tempering time and is not a must.

The link to the least expensive Rule aerator that I found is this:
http://www.discountmarinesupplies.com/Livewell_Pumps-RULE_PORTABLE_LIVEWELL_AERATOR_KIT.html
I miss spoke on the price, it's $29.95... du

Update on trapping fish in DIY fish trap.. I previously tried Aquamax 500, bread, and cat food with no luck. Today, I used some night crawlers in one trap and torn up hot dogs in the other. I could only leave them in for one hour and had about 15 CNBG in each trap



The CNBG were anywhere from 1" to 3" long.. Looking back at this LMB, and all others I am catching look the same

it seems a bit odd they are skinny with all these little CNBG in this pond. There is no structure in it, just some shoreline vegetation. Any thoughts on this ? I am going to try to fish out the LMB thinking maybe there are just too many..du

Those particular CNBG look rather small to make the most efficient meals for LMB that size. Best meal deal for a bass is a BG 1/3 to 1/4 it's own length.

Are you sure those are CNBG? They look more like regular northern-strain bluegill to me. But I could be wrong.

david u where did the BG/CNBG come from ? Very hard from the pic to tell if they are CNBG , BG or a mix. Some seem to have yellowish on fins and tails some not . Side bars look regular BG ish to me. One looks like it has CNBG nose scaling.

These BG have unknown parentage.. The adult BG on page one of this thread are representative of all the adults I have caught out of this small pond.. All the small BG trapped and the ones I seined out of this pond last fall look the same to me.. What do you think they are? I haven't caught any other kind of fish out of this pond but the BG and the skinny LMB...du

I should add that the larger bluegill were in excellent body condition, whatever strain they are...

Nice body condtion but the fins look pretty shredded from rubbing up against the metal cage. I see this in a lot of fish people bring to me to mount that were put in a fish basket or metal fish holding cage.

OK, I looked at pics of Northern BG and the ones I caught sure have more of the "orangey" coloring that the NBG seem to have.

Here's another BG I caught yesterday showing the colorization. Is this usually indicative of the NBG? It isn't a big deal one way or another, but it would be nice to know what species of BG I've got.

It's just the radioactive water. Nice looking fish!

Oh that's it ehhh..du

Its orange/yellow on the fins and tail not the body. The last pic does show bars with CNBG width. See these.

One Nice Coppernose - http://www.pondboss.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=20;t=002562;p=1#000000

CNBG variation Fla vs Ark -
http://www.pondboss.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=20;t=004532;p=1#000004



CNBG

David, I don't recall ever seeing a fish like that.