Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Help question

Question 1 - should you return guts etc. from cleaning fish to the pond for the fish to eat? How about freezer burned meats?
question 2 - skinned places on the catfish heads earlier in the year - are they from spawning or fungus more likely? they're gone now
question 3 - will coppernosed bluegill spawn into regular bluegill after time without restock?
Thanks in advance, plus thank you for the very imformative thread on well water

Bob:

Howdy and welcome to the Forum!

(You wouldn't happen to have a brother named Bull, would you?)

1) In part, it depends on what you want to feed. Catfish might well get some value from fish offal; turtles sure would. BG and LMB, I doubt would be interested.

I puzzled that question myself for a year or two, and decided if buildup of organics was a common problem with ponds, I'd remove the whole fish and count it as a small gain against that problem.

2) My bet would be that the rubbed spots on Cats present earlier and gone now were from spawning. They get lots of scrapes getting into and out of spawning cavities. We have also discussed whether they get "love bites" as well.

3) CNBG are a separate, true breeding subspecies of BG and can't convert to other types. If the only BG you have in a pond are CNBG, that's all they are ever gonna be.

Theo:

I tried CJ's advise of trying cut GSH on the bottom right around dusk for CC. I caught a LMB about an hour after sundown instead.....

So, LMB "might" eat some of that fish offal as well. (at least in my pond - I've got weird fish!!!)

Well, I've caught LMB on old deer liver, but I will decline from feeding it to them. I would feed fish offal first.

One thing I would worry about is parasite recycling, not knowing whether it could be a problem in fish or not.

One word of caution about offal...if it isn't eaten by something, you end up with some else for the water to decompose. Plus, if you toss heads, fins, vertebrae...one of the worst "fish" related injuries I'll always remember was stepping on a fish fin (without a fish attached) that went through my deck shoe and about an inch into my foot. Couldn't walk for five days, had to get a tetanus shot and the doctor had to lance it three days into the ordeal. I'd had a fish kill and didn't remove all the dead fish and two years later, paid for it. I no longer put offals into any of my ponds.

Bob:

What a great point to make. That was enough to stop me from doing that!!

Ouch! Was it a catfish spine?