Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose red ear sunfish

ive ordered some res for my 4 acre pond. pond has lmb, cc,hbg & bc.
but the res are only 2-3 inches & im worried theyll get gobbled up before they get a chance to mature & spawn.

any recommendations on a pen or holding area i could construct to allow them to grow till fall & then let them loose.

will the res eat cc food pellets?

any ideas would be appreciated

thanks

John,

First -- welcome to Pond Boss.

I know your pain. Been there - done that. Not a happy outcome, although I did catch two very healthy red-eared sunfish last year that were about 12-13 inches. So at least a few have survived my feeble attempts.

I've tried and failed several times because of the 2-3 inch size. If you can make a proper cage, and you can tend it nearly daily, I believe you can grow them to a successful size that won't get eaten as soon as they are let loose in the pond.

I first tried a "blocking net" made from a seine. I obviously didn't have enough weight on the bottom, and things slipped in and out. It is amazing how fast a 10-inch bass can slip under such a net. Eric West has some good posts here somewhere about blocking nets. I'll see if I can find the posts.

The next time, I tried a commercial fish "basket" (like those for keeping fish rather than using a stringer), a fish cage made from plastic fencing, and again with the seine, but with more weights. All failed miserably. The basket and the cage both grew massive amounts of algae within about a week, and the fish started to die, so I let the few survivers loose. I don't have any idea what happened to the fish behind the blocking net, but they disappeared.

There are some real good posts on here by Bill Cody and Cecil Baird about building fish cages. They also had a series of articles in Pond Boss magazine on proper building of cages. They should work, and they are both experts.

As for feeding, I started with dried krill. They loved it. I added redworms from my worm farm. They loved them. I started to grind up floating pellets, but they were mostly gone or dead by the time I got them to eating pellet food.

This year I'm hoping I'll have time to try Barrel-Ponics. I've got the barrels. I bought a 600 GPH pump for $39 at Harbor Freight while on my way to Pond Boss IV.

Good luck, and I'm sure lots of others will chime in. Keep us posted.

Ken

Hi John

You're right to be concerned stocking RES at that size. I would strongly recommend growing them out behind a net. Eric West is the local expert on this subject - and it's been a feature article in Pond Boss Magazine. You can call PB directly and request the article if it isn't available already somewhere in here. Basically you net off a small, necked down area of your pond that has depth required for fish to go through the season. Since RES are hard to pellet train, growth will most likely be slower than with other sunfish species, so you may want to keep that net up until Fall and consistently sample their growth rates. I think at 6"+ they should be ready to roll, but again, Eric is an expert in growing out panfish in a BOW with LMB fishery.

RES will not eat CC pellets; too low of protein at 32%. NOt enough meat-fish flavor in CC pellets. RES are essentially meat eaters (snails, mollusks). RES are not good at accepting pellets even high protein ones, of 40%+. It takes lots of careful, thoughtful, effort and patience to get RES "on food". One technique for feed training RES is explained in a back issue of PBoss Mag- May-Jun 2010: FEED TRAINED REDEARS MADE EASY. Theo Gallus tells how he trained 26 redear sunfish in his basement aquaculture system to eat fish pellets.

I may have to get that issue. I put a few in my aquarium and they would not eat any thing I would feed them. So of course they died.

You would think one would get hungry enough to eat rather than starve but then again, I would not want to eat cardboard either if that is all I had.

Just wanted to add my $.02.

$0.02 can be valuable information and it is a good example here to indicate the difficulity of raising RES and feed training RES. This is also a little indication of why they are not as common in fish farms as BG.

I guess this is why the 1-3 inch fish are mostly available and hard to find adults.

I guess one could gamble and add 100's if not 1000's of the little critters in hopes some make it.

But then you have the risk of too many making it and not having enough to eat.

I think it would be neat to have an older pond you could raise snails and other clams, etc. for a few years then add RES to it and see how they grow.

Be sure to stock a few CC or SMB to help with the RES spawn.

My RES feed trained themselves.
They normally don't feed on the surface but have caught them on pellet flies.
Tie a PH pellet fly on a heavy hook and they will take it on or near bottom.
Works for me.

Our RES will eat a few pellets off the bottom or from a suspended platform with sinking pellets. Nowhere near as well as BG though. It is very hard to find larger RES from a hatchery as they don't try to feed train them. As Bill notes its not easy to feed train them . They have to be trained in crowded conditiond (like an RAS) early or let them learn on their own. In that case only a small % will catch on.

If they can't be feed trained how do fisheries sell larger ones? I would think they'd have to supplement feed something in grow out ponds? Or if you did cage 2-3" fish what are you suppose to feed them to grow large enough to release..? Seems like contradictory info, and very confusing..

Not many sell larger RES. They sell them small for just that reason. They grow them in with the BG. I have not seen or heard of anyone raising them in cages. They may but its news to me.

I got 750 4" last year. How do they grow them to 4 inches?

I am pretty sure they grow them in ponds by themselves or with other panfish/small bass. The RES can feed in a little different niche and eat invertebrates & snails the BG do not or cant eat. But it crowded conditions they may not grow very fast. ONe place in OH regularly grows larger RES. They grow them in larger ponds small drainable lakes and with mixed fish species. RES feed in a different niche thus they grow pretty well 6"-9" in these conditions.

Bill, I talked with another good sized fish supplier in Ohio and they said they fed their RES on cut up shrimp and FHM.

That wouuld be interesting. Can you find out more and post the specifics?

Places I know do what Bill described. The 4 inch fish sold are those left over and not needed for brood stock.

ewest, the supplier that told me that was Jones in Ohio. They don't seem to have a large supply of the larger fish. That was what they told me last year when I was inquiring about larger RES for stocking.

Bill knows of a different supplier in OH that has large RES, but I'll leave it up to him to furnish the details. I think I remember what he told me, but I'd hate to post something incorrect.

Had I realized they were so hard to find in large sizes I would have bought more small ones. I am sure they would have been expensive snack, but if you stock enough I would hope a few would make it.

Now that my LMB are larger and will spawn this year, I doubt any 1-3 inch fish have much chance.

Thanks

Fenders Fish and Llama Farm in south central OH has larger RES available in the Fall season. They do this primarily by farming around 230 acres of water. Larger RES come from the larger(upto30ac) ponds that have a mixed fishery. Fenders do occassionally make truck trips to AK and may be able to haul fish both ways. Maybe contact them for details if interested.

well, i broke down & stocked 500 ea 3-4 inchers of res\\

any bigger & THEY GET REALLY EXPENSIVE!!!!

will just cross fingers & hope for the best.

thanks for all the input.

This past Saturday, I took a short break after lunch. I grabbed some Texas Jumping Worms (Dave Davidson's offspring). My ultralight rig that was rigged with 4 lb. mono and with just a #2 long shank gold hook. I went to where I have lots of cover/structure. The first cast gave me a 12-inch black crappie as the worm settled in. I quickly re-baited, and tossed it back to the same area. The worm hit bottom, and I left it there for a few seconds. All of a sudden something started stripping line off my reel. I figured it was one of my larger catfish. It turned out to be a huge red ear sunfish. I didn't have a camera, or any measuring/weighing equipment -- so I know it didn't really happen. But, in my hallucination, I'm guessing it was at least 12-inches, and at least 2 lbs. I got it back in the water as quickly as possible.

As I mentioned in a post above, I tried adding red ear sunfish a few years ago, and I catch one every now and then.

After what I caught on Saturday, I really want to get more growing in the pond.

I'm planning on trying them in an aquaculture/aquaponics project sometime this summer to see if I can grow them to a size where they won't immediately be eaten.

These are such great fish, it sure would be great if we could find a way to reasonably grow them to big sizes.

Rule #1, never go fishing without a camera ... Oooops, I break that rule all the time. Did it look like a male or a female? Sounds like a great fish Ken.

Yeah -- oh, do I know about going out without a camera? I'd been doing plumbing and bushogging, and didn't even have my cell phone with me. I know better, and I need to be whipped with a night crawler. Actually, I think I need to find a bunch of real cheap digital cameras I can put all around. I've done that with tools from Harbor Freight.

I don't know how to tell a redear male from a female. Do we have any good photos?

I'm sure they're on here somewhere... Females tend to be more subdued in coloration, their ear flap is usually yellowish orange. They'll have a bit of a yellowish coloration to the breasts Males, particularly in the spring tend to be black on the bottom fins into their lower half. During peak spawn I have seen some males be almost completely black. Outside of the spawn they're close to females but have a bit more of a orangery as opposed to yellow breast area. Their ear flaps are edged with a darker orange or red, hence the name.

In this link: http://www.tnfish.org/FishIdentificationID_TWRA/TWRA_Sunfish_Identification_Key.htm#redear The top redear is a male, the bottom a female.

The key to redear growth and survival is structure in your pond. Habitat for snails- the more woody submerged structure the better. Certain vegetation is also vital- mats of primrose, alligatorweed, lemon bacopa, maidencane (all the stuff that typically takes over or makes bank angling tough, or is on most states' invasive list...) all provide substrate for their primary food sources. Submerged plants like milfoil, pondweeds, white water lilies are also great but usually tougher to manage. The marginal plants can be burned back annually to maximize edge for fishing and keep the 'food bed' going for the 'ears. This also helps with their survival when less than 10". In our area they usually come off the beds before the bluegill, right after the bass spawn so they're ripe for predation. Would be nice if they hit the feed but they are a fantastic fighter and worth the effort to manage for.