A ' shooter ' is one of that 10% of a population that grow the fastest, i.e. "that fish is a shooter" - an unusually fast grower.
Minnows jumping out of the water are shiners probably being chased by a larger fish, in your case no doubt some of the YP. Since your YP are now larger and water is warm (high 70's low 80's) many of the pellet feeding YP have ceased feeding at the surface esp if they have put on a lot of body fat earlier when water was cooler. I suspect the YP feeding on YP are a few from Remlinger that went off pellets due to high numbers of small minnows available. Shooters rarely go off pellets. I think you still have a good number of pellet eating YP, they are just not feeding well in warm water temps, common in mid summer for largest YP. All my large YP are now not eating pellets, only those YP mostly less than 9" are active at feeding time. Also sometimes there is a slight adjustment lag period to converting from hydrated to hard pellets. I assume you are feeding at the same time as before the auto-feeder? Very high numbers of minnows indicates many of the YP are pellet eaters and not predominant minnow eaters.
Predators. Use your minnow trap to check for a YP hatch. You almost definately had some sort of egg hatch, maybe just a small one. 2011 YP in northern OH should be around 2" =/- 1/2" and big enough to be caught in a 1/4" mesh trap by Jun 20-Jul 1. If you have small YP plan on adding predators this fall. Adding SMB will result in a spawn from them probably in 2013 unless you can find SMB stockers 6"-8" which are extremly rare at OH hatcheries. You can mix SMB and WE. WE will help somewhat to thin numbers of small SMB. If you want to maintain lots of minnows/shiners just stock WE which will not spawn, overall eat fewer forage fish than the SMBWE combo. With jsut WE you will have better control of how many minnows are present by adding or removing WE. I have found that if you only stock WE and not SMB you can stock more WE per acre and all will do quite well. This is due to lack of recruitment and thus less predatory pressure from SMB.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 06/26/11 09:54 PM.
