Pond Boss Forums FISH & FISHING Sunfish-Including Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass Strange external parasite?

One of my ponds has been infested by some lousy external parasite. It is mainly in my LMB's mouths, but sometimes on a fin or tail. It's not an anchorworm, but is a bloodsucker, as I took one out with hemostats and it was full of blood. Not leeches either. They look transparent, but with some mottling. I would say they look like...but I have never seen anything like them before. Worst fish had 8 or 9 in thier mouths. Others none or one. Had this pond for over 7 years and never seen one before. How do I identify these things? I have scoured the web for photos and not seen anything like them. Fish look fat and healthy, but I was pulling them off for the most part and sun baking them. The majority are in the LMBs mouth, roof. They are just too small to get a good photo of them. The biggest ones are about 3/8 inch. And when I remove them a sucker type mouth starts poking around.

Without a picture or a specimen my vote is some specie of leech. Do a little more homework on the leeches. There are over 500 species of leeches in 10 families; quite a diverse group. Are you familiar at all with the Piscicolidae? There are also several fish parasitic glossiphoniids (Glossiphoniidae). Is there a discoid head or a proboscis? Numerous leeches are only 6-9mm long and some as short as 2-5mm. There is probably some sort of minute caudal sucker for attachment? Is it minutely segmented? You have a hand lens? Shawn Banks is good with parasites. Maybe he will see this and respond.

I know, without a photo it is a guess. I have tried like hell to d my homework, googled through five pages of photos, almost 10 on the web. Nada. Not exactly my area of expertise as I really have not had issues in that area. I've seen a bunch of the koi problems, but parasites are not high on the list. And most of the LMB parasites are internal. I am thinking I need a good web page showing them with photos, or a fish dept. Maybe F and G or some ag university. Local would be better. I care enough to look for the answer. Problems could be ahead, or I could figure out where they came from. Ironically this pond has always had the cleanest, healthiest fish. Not any more.

Back yesterday to the infected pond after some backhoe work. Then went to coontail bg overrun pond and took 40 more out. 200 to date so far. Goal is 1,000 at least. Did catch a couple of still in there fish, a nice RES and a couple of lmb, dink and juvenile. Even caught a pregnant female bg, barely three inches. Stepped on a dead gsf the other day, barely 2, full of eggs.

Off to big pond after 5PM. Put 25 of the 3" and below bg in a bait bucket and backtrolled a bit. Not much, then wind completely subsided, calm before the storm. Barometer heavy drop and outside temp in 50"s, just amazing as we were in the 100's last year at this time. Pond still full, where it was dropping like a rock also last year. Fish started hitting, shut off the electric and sat in one spot, barely moving. Fishing two poles, size #4 baithook, very small splitshot and live bg. Every time I catch one I inspect them rather than weigh and measure. Take out hemostats and de parasite, every fish. Have one fish I miss and incredible 5 times, right next to boat. Got it on the 6th hookset. If thier a tail first hitter I will miss them all day long. This fish had 16 parasites in it's mouth. Some have none, average about two. They are kind of clear, with little pepper flakes inside. Elongated white sucker mouth reaches around when I remove them. Sometime bg is good for 3 fish. I toss real raggady one over, and had a lmb boil right next to boat on one and scare the bejesus out of me. Hitting so hard I often had to reel in one next to boat and let it sit while I reeled the other in. The average has gone up about 1-2 inches and 6-8 oz from last season. Just under 2 lbs now, no dinks. Got 25 or more in 3 hours and that was that, too cold to even light my cigar. I got these little glass sample jars and some bubble envelopes. I think whoever let the albino cc's in there brought along these unwanted guests. I am thinking I might be able to zoom in my camera also, and get a photo for here. Later in the evening when unloading the boat I had one crawling on my hand. Gave me the heebie jeebies but did not look like it was sucking blood. I need some kind of alcohol or formaldehyde to put these things in. Even though I have full management control of this pond, I cannot prevent residents from doing stuff that hurts the pond overall. They just don't know any better.