I think I am the one mainly responsible for the posts of "that RES eat primarily snails and that lack of enough or proper forage will limit the number of RES a pond can support." As snrub continues he says "adults will feed on a variety of food organisms, depending on what is abundant and what is vulnerable. Common food items are midge larvae, snails, mayfly larvae and dragonfly/damselfly larvae."
RES will eat a wide variety of foods, but we have to remember that in a fish community pond so does most of the other fish. This competition makes many of the foods limiting to some species when fish numbers are common to high based on the overall productivity of the pond and type of fish species involved. As I know the literature little has been studied as to the competitive nature of RES with BG or the other panfishes and smaller primary fish predators primarily young bass. I suspect that the RES are not quite as aggressive as many of the other fish species which if true puts RES at some sort of disadvantage. Primarily with lack of competition for what ever reason RES could be quite successful as noted next.
From Willis' paper "....four small Missouri ponds that ranged from only 0.1 to 0.4 acres. The largemouth bass averaged 58 pounds per acre (range of 27 to 118), while the redear sunfish averaged 298 pounds per acre (range was 232 to 356)." My questions for this are how much competition did RES have in these ponds, what was the natural food base, and what was the size structure of the pounds of RES in the those ponds? Were all less than 6" or was there a normal size distribution of fingerling to 12"?
Regarding "One pond had just a few bluegills and another pond had some green sunfish, but redears made up most of the sunfish biomass.
How could this be unless they are eating more than just snails?"
For this we do not know the habitat type and foods available in those ponds. Information to make a case can always be pulled from data. Did habitat or competition favor RES and not BG or GSF? RES by themselves as a primary panfish with lack of other sunfish competition in a pond can no doubt result in sizable pounds of RES produced each season. There is definitely more research especially niche studies that could be done regarding RES in sport pond fishery.
PB Forum members can provide good information about the success or failure of RES in their ponds. When making conclusions about the fish success or failure in ones pond it is important to keep all variables in perspective and how they could possibly relate to each other.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 11/22/14 02:21 PM.
