Pond Boss Forums FISH & FISHING Fly Fishing & Other Fish Species Walleye pond progress.

You might be surprised about the growth rates of 50 "fingerling" predators in a food filled one acre. The smallies may grow as fast or faster than the walleye until food becomes limiting. Keep us advised as to their progress.

I have been all riled up as to the age of these fish. I am sending one on an airplane ride to South Dakota for aging. Our good friend Dave Willis said he would check one out for me. It will be getting shipped on Monday Oct. 14th. I can be a stickler for detail. The suspense is killing me. I will share the results with Pond Boss on this thread. When I know the age of the specimen I will be more specific on the stocking circumstances. Regardless of the true age, I am definitely very pleased so far.

T.J. I fried them up with just some reg. seasoned flour. I never had a decent sized walleye filet, and wanted to get a true sense of the flavor.

Brook, Wilson. I'm with Cody. I put some small SMB in the same pond Nov. 2012. I have caught 3-4 of them, their growth rates were all over the board. I put them in at 3-4" I have caught 2 that were pushing 9", and the other 2 were around 6 inches.

James - even if WE were two years in the pond and 3 yrs old, the fish you caught had good growth.

Agree with Bill, good body condition, you should be proud!

I'm interested to see the age of the fish!!

I sent a walleye to Dave Willis. He received it this morning and the results are in. If I did the math correctly the specimen WE had a Wr of 94.47. Here is a copy of the very e-mail he sent me.

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Today at 11:44 AM







Good morning, Jim. Your fish arrived safely, in good condition. J



The fish was 335 mm total length (13.2 inches) and weighed 351 g (454 g in a pound so 0.77 lb).



It was definitely an age 1 fish, meaning that it was collected in the fall near the end of its second growing season. Hopefully, that makes sense. It would turn age 2 on 1 January of 2014, as that is when fisheries biologists arbitrarily assign �hatch-days� to fish (not birthday; hatched, not born. J). Anyway, it came from a 2012 year class (hatched in spring 2012).



Dave


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Dave Willis, I thank you very much. Now I can sleep at night.

Thank goodness I helped your sleep, Jim! Can't mess with sleep -- it's too valuable!

So that's 6-8" growth on a WE in a year?

Most likely the walleye measured and aged by Dr.Willis was very close to one of the larger ones that were stocked at abt 8". Let's do a little back calculation. An 8" WE weighs close to 0.17 lb (std wt) and the 13.2" tested WE weighed 0.77 lb, growth of around 5.2" and gain of 0.6 lb in one year. If we assume a fish needs to eat 10 lbs of fish to gain a pound then this fish gained 0.6 lb and ate 6 lbs of fish to gain that 0.6 lb. For 2.25" FHM there are around 250 per lb which calculates to the WE eating 1500 2.5" FHM in one year. Now does this help understand why one needs a lot of forage fish to grow bass and other predators such as walleye?

Very nice! Dave is the man...