Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Need Help - Wild Fish Contamination from Stream

Bill - That was exactly what I feared would be the case on survival rates.

You seem to have a good answer for every question that is plaguing me. I would like to have you plug a USB cable into the "fishing knowledge" part of your brain and just download it all to a DVD for me!

Until that technology gets perfected, I guess we will all just have to get our learnin' using the wonderful PB Forum resource.

Thanks to everyone.
Rod

Yeah, the only thing that keeps me happy is that it's the same pond.

I do have SMB recruitment.

On a side note, recruitment of most any species (like Cody was saying) is not necessarily hard to achieve. It's actually seeing the fry or YOY that takes the time.

You've got to spend a lot of time just watching, 'cause if you don't, you'll be sure your efforts failed.

Initial stocking of forage [BG, FHM, GSH, Crayfish] was Fall 2008. YP and RES followed in Spring 2009, SMB and HSB in Fall 2009. HBC stocked unintentionally Fall 2010. WE stocked Fall 2011.

BG will be utilized as forage by my predators, but they prefer in this order I think:

Pellets
GSH
YP

That leads me into another issue: Lack of YP during angling surveys. The population has been hit I'm assuming as I used to catch a dozen 10-12" YP through the ice or on jig/crawler combo year round. I think I've still got some bruiser females [13.5" caught this Spring], but their YOY are being hammered hard by WE, SMB, HSB and HBC. I've also noticed that my BG and GSH routinely outcompete the few YP I see in the pond. They just aren't as aggressive and might be marginalized by the more aggressive fish. So, that's two strikes against them. I'm going stock advanced fish once I finish growing them out, but am also dedicating a .4 acre pond to female YP, male BG, and male RES only to provide a trophy fishery. I may have to learn to live without YP in the main pond fishery without supplemental stocking.

Caught a 11.5" RES in early Summer - pond record. I don't target them often, but assume they are performing their role well as I have not witnessed any parasites on my fish. When I catch one I consider it a bonus and a blessing.