Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Shiners GOOD or BAD??

My pond is about 50 yards wide by 50 yards long in a circular shape. Its max depth is 6ft and is shped like a bowl. I have a wide varity of fish but are concerned about my bass. The shiners I have put in the pond 3 yrs ago are very large about 6 to 7 inches long. My bass are fat and I know that they eat them frequently. Is there a way my shiners could out number my bass and screw every thing up. Pleaze give me a response on your opionon.

Your shiners should out number your bass. Each bass needs to eat at least half its body weight each year just to survive. And it needs to eat a couple more pounds of shiners to grow.

Most people report that shiners dissappear after a few years because of heavy bass predation.

If you check the RW's for your bass that will tell you if you have a problem.

Shiners cannot overpower bass for two big reasons. First, shiners can't compete with bass because of mouth size. Bass have big mouth, shiners have tiny little shiner mouth. Second, shiners don't grow large, maybe 8 inches, max. 12 inch bass can eat 8 inch shiners. Advantage, bass.

Shiners are also known for nest robbing. However, that may be a good feature considering the size of your pond.

JD - You don't really tell us how many, what size bass and what type they are (LMB, SMB) in your pond. The only way that I forseee golden shiners causing problems for bass is if they some how become overly abundant for only a few medium-small bass in the pond. In this case overabundant shiners may prevent successful bass spawns by eating all the bass eggs from only a few vulnerable openly exposed bass nests. Thus no eggs would make it to hatch time. This would happen only in exceptional cases.

Each LMB once 10" long would eat lots and lots of shiners per each growing season. Number of shiners consumed would depend on size of shiners (200-1000 shiners/yr/bass). Your main problem in your small pond I think will be for you to maintain enough shiners in the pond after the bass get to 10"-12".

Thanks for your responses.Bill Cody my bass are all LMB, there are aboat 50 LMB in my pond with 15 of them over 14". 20 being 8" to 13" and the rest are mainly Hatchlings.

Q:If my shiners do get out of hand(just saying). Is there anything I can do to stop them?

Shiners will bait easily. Throw out bread daily in one spot and then try a casting net to get large numbers of them, or they will eat bread on a very small hook.

What do you guys think about shinners and their affect on BG?

Shiners directly compete with bluegill in the food chain. But, the farther south bluegill live, the better odds the panfish have to outcompete shiners, simply because bluegill reproduce more often, with more babies per spawn. Shiners are nest robbers, and aggressive predators limited only by mouth size.